Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

SOUTH ESSEX WATERWORKS BILL

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF AVIATION

Passengers (V.I.P. Treatment)

Mr. K. Lewis: asked the Minister of Aviation what categories of persons passing through London and other airports are accorded Very Important Person treatment; and what is the annual cost of maintaining these facilities.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aviation (Mr. C. M. Woodhouse): Special arrangements are accorded to persons whose public positions, here or abroad, justify the provision of some privacy or ceremonial reception, for example, royalty, heads of State, Ministers and holders of senior political, diplomatic and military office. The cost is about £13,000 a year.

Mr. Lewis: That seems reasonable as as far my hon. Friend's Department is concerned, but is the aware that many of the nationalised airways are increasingly providing V.I.P. treatment and what is called Commercially Important People treatment for people and that this is getting out of hand? Would it not be a good idea if my hon. Friend's Department represented to I.A.T.A. that on all tickets where people request either V.I.P. or C.I.P. treatment there should be an extra 10 per cent. charged? This would cut it down considerably.

Mr. Woodhouse:: I will certainly consider my hon. Friend's interesting suggestion. I would point out that in practically all the cases, and I think all the cases which have attracted public criticism recently, it has been the airline operators and not my Department who have been responsible for the practices criticized. We have no power to compel airlines to alter their practice in this matter.

Mr. Rankin: Can the hon. Member do something about securing V.I.P. treatment for distinguished authors and other literary persons?

Mr. Woodhouse: It is our practice in an extremely limited number of cases, going beyond the categories which I have listed, to give such treatment. Needless to say, we do this with a most critical eye. Only a very small handful of people of personal eminence have been so treated on our initiative. They include, for example—and I merely give examples—the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Brabazon and you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker:: Sir Arthur Vere Harvey.

Sir A. V. Harvey: But is it not a fact——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I feel that we ought to get a move on with Questions, and I called the hon. Member to ask the next Question.

Executive Aircraft

Sir A. V. Harvey: asked the Minister of Aviation which executive aircraft are allowed to land and be housed at London Airport.

Mr. Woodhouse: Private and executive aircraft are permitted to use London (Heathrow) Airport in accordance with the rules set out in Civil Aviation Information Circular No. 56/1961. I am arranging for a copy of this circular to be sent to my hon. Friend.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Will my hon. Friend take another look at this matter and try to emulate what happens in other countries, for example at Idlewild, Newark, U.S.A., and Zurich, where many more executive aircraft are landing? In turn, that helps the revenue and the facilities available. Why do we take such a narrow view of this matter?

Mr. Woodhouse: I do not think it is true to say that we take a narrow view of the matter. The airports which my hon. Friend mentioned are in different circumstances in one way or another from Heathrow. After the information circular, to which I referred, had come into effect, over 1,200 landings of executive aircraft took place in the following twelve months at Heathrow.

Mr. Cronin: Is there not a very large scope for an increase in the manufacture of executive-type aircraft? Would it not help our manufacturing industry enormously if the Ministry adopted a less restricted attitude towards private executive aircraft, consistent with safety?

Mr. Woodhouse: There is certainly very great scope for it, and we do everything we can to encourage it. Heathrow is the only civil airport in which there is any limitation at all. Bearing in mind that it is intended primarily for the use of civil aircraft operating scheduled passenger and freight services, I do not think that the limitations are unreasonable, also bearing in mind that there is no other airport to which they apply.

Helicopters

Mr. Holland: asked the Minister of Aviation (1) to what extent the Services' requirement for helicopters is declining; and
(2) what development is proceeding on civil helicopter projects; and what Government support is forthcoming for such projects.

Mr. Woodhouse: I cannot anticipate defence decisions, but plans provide for continuing high deliveries of helicopters to the Services for several years ahead at least. Following the cancellation of the Rotodyne, Westlands are considering other possible civil helicopter projects in relation to the future programme of military requirements. They are keeping in close touch with the Ministry on this.

Mr. Holland: Whilst thanking my hon. Friend for what sounds to be an encouraging reply, may I ask him not to forget that his Ministry's requirements both for the Services and for civil pro-

jects form the mainstay of support for the British helicopter industry and that irregularly phasing the orders causes temporary redundancies which lead to the permanent loss to the industry of skilled craftsmen with years of experience and knowhow? Does my hon. Friend deprecate this outflow of skill from the industry?

Mr. Woodhouse: Yes. I am well aware of the importance of Government orders to the industry. They are continuing at a high level for a number of years ahead, and the fact that there have been some contractions in some parts of the industry is a measure of the success of the policy of rationalisation, which has made it possible to keep up the level of production with a more efficient deployment of labour.

Mr. Hunter: Are any aircraft of this type being ordered from the United States of America? If so, it could be destructive in this country. I understand that there are worries in southwest Middlesex regarding short time in the aircraft factories.

Mr. Woodhouse: There is no such case that would fit the description the hon. Gentleman has given. There is still under consideration a project for joint use for B.E.A. and Sabena of the Vertol 107 aircraft, but this is at present only under consideration. No order has been placed.

Private Flying

Mr. H. Hynd: asked the Minister of Aviation what is the present concession on fuel used for private flying; and what improvement he proposes in order to encourage people to take flying lessons.

Mr. Woodhouse: A rebate of duty on petrol used by flying clubs is paid at a rate for the present year of 1s. 3d. a gallon. It is not possible to improve on this within the finance available for the scheme.

Mr. Hynd: Has the Minister given recent consideration to the desirability of forming a pool of pilots in this way?

Mr. Woodhouse: This scheme was introduced in the first place expressly in order to help to form a pool of pilots. The fact that the increase in private flying last year has, so to speak, bumped against the ceiling of the subsidy is


evidence that the encouragement given by the Government to private flying has been very successful.

Dr. Bennett: Will my hon. Friend consider allowing petrol supplied for seaplanes to be duty-free?

Mr. Woodhouse: That is a slightly different question, of which I would require notice; but I will consider it.

Short Brothers and Harland, Belfast

Mr, Lee: asked the Minister of Aviation whether he will state Her Majesty's Government's policy on the future of Short Brothers and Harland, Belfast.

Mr. McMaster: asked the Minister of Aviation what steps Her Majesty's Government plan to take in order to ensure a reasonable continuity of research and development work and of production orders with the firm of Short Brothers and Harland in Belfast.

Mr. Rankin: asked the Minister of Aviation whether he proposes to place a further order with Messrs. Short Brothers and Harland for the Belfast freighter, in view of military needs.

Mr. H. Butler: asked the Minister of Aviation (1) what steps he is taking to place further orders for Belfast freighters or other aircraft with Messrs Short Brothers and Harland, Limited;
(2) if he will give details of his policy towards Short Brothers and Harland.

Mr. J. Silverman: asked the Minister of Aviation what plans he has for placing further orders with Short Brothers and Harland, Belfast.

Mr. Diamond: asked the Minister of Aviation what is Her Majesty's Government's policy with regard to the future of Short Brothers and Harland.

Mr. Woodhouse: Short Brothers and Harland are at present working on an order for 10 Belfast aircraft due for delivery to the Royal Air Force in 1964–65. The Government recognise, of course, the importance of Shorts to the economy of Northern Ireland, and this is a factor which will be given due weight in the placing of future orders for aircraft requirements.

Mr. Lee: Is the the hon. Gentleman aware that there is now the very gravest apprehension about the future of Short Brothers? Some of us feel that the firm has been neglected quite disgracefully. An order for ten Belfasts is an uneconomic proposition. The floor programme there will speedily dry up unless repeat orders are given quickly. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that some of us are beginning to look with suspicion at the neglect of Short Brothers? The firm led the world in vertical take-off aircraft. It was messed about with the Britannic and now it is being messed about with its successor, the Belfast freighter.

Mr. Woodhouse: I am aware of the apprehension which has been expressed, and I am particularly anxious not to say anything which would encourage that apprehension. I do not think it is true to say that Short Bros. has been neglected. The firm is a part of the aircraft industry of the United Kingdom and, when my right hon. Friend's predecessor announced the new policy in February, 1960, special reservations were introduced in that policy to take care of exceptional cases, such as Shorts, and they have been applied to the case of Shorts.

Mr. McMaster: Has the attention of my hon. Friend been drawn to the recent statement by the Chairman of Shorts that, unless further work is given soon, he will be faced with an immediate redundancy, thus breaking up a very valuable development team? Further, unless orders are placed soon for these aircraft, which are capable of being adapted for use both for tactical and strategic purposes, it may not be possible to have the planes delivered as quickly as the Army needs them in the future.

Mr. Woodhouse: I have the point raised in the last part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question very much in mind. As the House knows, Short Bros. has presented a project for consideration for the requirement for a tactical freighter. That will be carefully considered along with other submissions. I have also had my attention drawn to the press conference given by the Chairman of Shorts a short time ago. I have not seen an exact transcript


of the whole of what he said. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] Because no such transcript exists. I understand that he pointed out that, unless new orders were coming along, it was only a matter of time before the factory would be without work. This is true of Shorts as of any other firm. Nevertheless, the position at present is that the work which Shorts has in hand will carry the firm well into next summer, irrespective of future orders.
As regards redundancy, it has been made clear to the House before now that some, contraction of the numbers employed in the aircraft industry of the United Kingdom as a whole is to be expected, and Shorts is a part of that industry.

Mr. Rankin: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that what he has told us does not harmonise with what the Chairman of Short Bros. has told us? Will he inquire a little more closely into that aspect of his statement, which I do not dispute; I accept it as he gives it? However, would he inquire a little more closely into that, because we are told that there is a steady filtering away from Short Bros. of design staff? In view of what the hon. Gentleman said latterly, we surely do not want to lose such a valuable investment to the aircraft industry?

Mr. Woodhouse: It is true that a rundown in numbers of any sector of the aircraft industry takes place initially among the design staff. I have no reason to think that anything I have said today is inconsistent with what the Chairman of Shorts said at his Press conference, though, if the hon. Gentleman can demonstrate such an inconsistency I will carefully look into it.

Mr. Butler: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the designers and technical people are very worried about this position because there is no alternative employment for them in Northern Ireland, with 9 per cent. unemployed and possibly more now, and that there is a great possibility of this integrated team breaking up entirely with great loss to the British aircraft industry?

Mr. Woodhouse: Yes, Sir. I am indeed aware of that anxiety, and I shall, of course, take that into consideration in considering our future placing of

orders, but I cannot place orders for aircraft for which the Services have no requirement.

Mr. Silverman: Can the hon. Gentleman give a categorical assurance on behalf of the Government that it is the intention to keep this organisation together and that sufficient orders will be placed to do that?

Mr. Woodhouse: I cannot give any categorical undertaking about future orders for reasons that I have already made clear. As I think the House knows, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland is coming over next week to discuss all these matters with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary including the aircraft industry among others, and in anticipation of these discussions I do not think it would be possible for me to give any categorical undertaking.

Mr. Diamond: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that what he has said adds to the anxiety felt by everyone connected with Northern Ireland and the aircraft industry? If there are orders sufficient for a year, surely the time is now overdue when his right hon. Friend and his Department should consider placing further orders? What is to happen to this organisation? Is it his desire, as in the case of Gloucester, to preside over the liquidation of the aviation industry?

Mr. Woodhouse: It is not my desire or that of my right hon. Friend to preside over the liquidation of the aviation industry. We have over the last two years taken measures essential to enable the aviation industry to withstand the very great difficulties that otherwise it would have been facing. This applies as much to Shorts of Belfast as to any other factory.

Mrs. McLaughlin: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that not only is the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland coming over here for important discussions next week, but there is also to be a delegation from the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and the works committee of Shorts; and that they are extremely worried about this matter? Can he reaffirm that this aircraft, the Belfast, and the development of it is the right type of machine that we shall require for the future, because


somehow it seems to have become a matter of political wrangle? Are the Government satisfied as the majority shareholders of this firm that they are carrying out their duties to the firm in Northern Ireland and the 7½ thousand men who have worked there?

Mr. Woodhouse: I am very glad indeed to give that assurance. The qualities of the Belfast are fully recognised by the fact that it has been ordered by the Royal Air Force, and there is no reason why its merits should enter into a political wrangle.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government have a very especial responsibility in this matter, that they own something like 70 per cent. of the equity, that Shorts over a year ago tendered for operational requirement 351, which the Government are still considering, and that at least two Cabinet Ministers have been to Shorts this spring? When are we to get something done about it?

Mr. Woodhouse: I am very well aware of the Government's responsibility as the major shareholder in the firm. Concerning the requirement of the O.R. 351, Shorts are not the only firm that has put in a project for this requirement. We have others to consider from two of the major aircraft groups in this country. It is an extremely important problem with far-reaching consequences, and we must give it mature consideration before we take a decision.

Mr. Diamond: asked the Minister of Aviation what representations he has received from the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and Members of Parliament of Northern Ireland with regard to the possible closing down of Messrs. Short and Harland Ltd. on account of the loss of United Kingdom Government orders.

Mr. Woodhouse: My right hon. Friend is in frequent touch with Northern Ireland Ministers about matters concerning the aircraft industry in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Diamond: How can the Parliamentary Secretary regard that as an adequate answer in view of the crisis affecting Short Brothers and Harland and the unemployment in Northern

Ireland? Is he not prepared to say more than that to allay this anxiety? Will he do something to stir up the Ministry of Aviation?

Mr. Woodhouse: I am indeed conscious of the anxiety in Northern Ireland, but I am not prepared to disclose the confidential discussions which are going on between my own Department and Departments of the Northern Ireland Government.

Mr. Stratton Mills: While ignoring the rather obvious political odour of this Question, would the Parliamentary Secretary recall the Motion I proposed in the House on 30th March, which was unanimously passed and which said that exceptional measures might be taken to alleviate unemployment in Northern Ireland? In looking at the future of Short Brothers and Harland, is it the intention of my hon. Friend to bear that Motion in mind?

Mr. Woodhouse: I recall my hon. Friend's Motion, and I was present during the debate. It has, in the context of the aircraft industry, always been the policy of Her Majesty's Government to make exceptional provisions for the industry in Northern Ireland, and that will continue.

Mr. Lee: Will the Parliamentary Secretary give a categorical assurance that there are no negotiations taking place or contemplated to sell Short Brothers and Harland to American interests?

Mr. Woodhouse: Yes, I can give that assurance.

Space Vehicle

Mr. Cronin: asked the Minister of Aviation what further consideration he has given to Britain's contribution, financial or otherwise, to the launching of a space vehicle.

Mr. Woodhouse: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. D. Price) on 16th April, when he stated that certain countries, including the United Kingdom, had signed the Convention for the European Launcher Development Organisation. A copy of that document has since been published as Cmnd. 1731. The Organisation's launcher will be available for


the launching of space vehicles for various purposes and the document referred to shows what the United Kingdom's contribution will be.

Mr. Cronin: Is it not the case that we are contributing £120 million to the £170 million which will be the total cost of the European space vehicle? It will not be launched until 1966 at the earliest, and we share this cost with six other nations. Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the French Government announced that France will launch an entirely French space vehicle in 1965 and that its cost will be less than the cost that we already contribute and which we share with six other countries?

Mr. Woodhouse: I think that the hon. Gentleman had the figure which he quoted a little wrong. The initial programme of E.L.D.O. is estimated to cost £70 million over five years and not £120 million, and our contribution to that is one-third or possibly a little more.

Mr. Cronin: While I entirely agree with the figures which the hon. Gentleman has given, has he completely forgotten that we contributed to Blue Streak, which has cost £90 million already, which brings the total up to £160 million?

Air Transport Licensing Board (B.E.A. Appeal)

Mr. K. Lewis: asked the Minister of Aviation whether he will make a statement on the report he has received from the commissioner considering the appeal by British European Airways against the decisions of the Air Transport Licensing Board in respect of air routes being proposed for use by independent airlines.

Captain Orr: asked the Minister of Aviation whether he will now announce the decision of his commissioner upon the appeal by British European Airways against the decision of the Air Transport Licensing Board.

Mr. Woodhouse: My right hon. Friend has not yet received the report of the commissioner appointed to hear these appeals. It is expected shortly. It will then be for him to decide the appeals, and he is well aware of the desirability of doing so as soon as possible.

Mr. Lewis: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that there has been quite

a delay, and, as soon as he receives the report, will he in coming to his decision have regard to the fact that the independent airlines have pioneered throughout a very difficult period many routes and that they deserve much better treatment of this application than they have received previously from the hon. Gentleman's Ministry? Will he look at it with favour when it comes along?

Mr. Woodhouse: I shall certainly convey my hon. Friend's suggestion to my right hon. Friend. I cannot accept his remarks about delay. These things necessarily take a considerable time, but a large element in what my hon. Friend refers to as delay was due to the fact that the applications were in some cases put in several months before the regulations requiring these licences came into effect

Mr. Lee: Will the hon. Gentleman take it from me that to accept this application would not correspond, in the opinion of many millions of people in this country, with the statement of his hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. K. Lewis), who would consider it in the same relation to B.E.A. as the Eagle Cunard is to B.O.A.C.?

Mr. Woodhouse: I shall convey the hon. Gentleman's suggestion to my right hon. Friend also.

Mr. Burden: Will my hon. Friend realise that we are living in the jet age and that many of the matters under consideration by his Ministry appear to be dealt with as if we were still living in the days of sail? Will he do his utmost to speed up his decisions and those of his Ministry in these matters which are of vital importance and urgency?

Mr. Woodhouse: As I have already pointed out, this particular decision is not yet under consideration by my Ministry because we have not yet received the commissioner's report, but as soon as we do we shall see that a decision is reached with all possible speed.

London Airport

Mr. Lipton: asked the Minister of Aviation why the lowest tender for the new multi-storey car park at London Airport was not accepted and why the


various designs submitted in this competition have not been published.

Mr. Woodhouse: The lowest tender failed to meet the specifications because it would have accommodated too few cars. Another tender, which was the lowest in terms of cost per car space, was functionally unacceptable. This was not an architectural competition, but an invitation to tender for design and construction. It is not Government practice to disclose details of unsuccessful tenders, and in the present case copyright of these designs remains with the firms submitting them.

Mr. Lipton: Is it not the general impression that this was an open public competition, in which various firms were invited to submit solutions of the very interesting technical problems posed by this construction; and, in accordance with the usual practice when open public competitions are held, should not the designs have been published?

Mr. Woodhouse: That may be so in competitions of an essentially architectural character, but this was not a purely architectural competition. Many of the designs submitted involve technical innovations or improvements, and we have no reason to think their sponsors would wish to have them published for the benefit of their competitors.

Sir A. V. Harvey: asked the Minister of Aviation on what date work is expected to begin on erecting the piers for passenger use at London Airport.

Mr. Woodhouse: The office blocks now being built incorporate the first part of the pier system for No. 3 Passenger Building, and bridges to connect them with the aircraft stands will be begun next summer. At about the same time we shall also start the first pier for the short-haul terminal.

Sir A. V. Harvey: When will this work be completed? Will my hon. Friend press upon his right hon. Friend that the facilities at London Airport need overhauling completely? For instance, buses are used continually. Will this work obviate the necessity of using buses to take passengers to and from aircraft?

Mr. Woodhouse: The answer to the first part of my hon. Friend's question is that the south office block with the piers

will be completed in July, 1962, and the north office block in May, 1963. The first pier from the short-haul building will take about nine to twelve months to build. As to the second part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, London Airport is in a state of continuous change and development, and will continue to be so for as far as one can see into the future.

Mr. Lipton: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that some passengers have to walk enormous distances from the waiting hall before they even get on to the bus? Will he do something about that?

Mr. Woodhouse: Yes. I will do my best to make it as easy as possible for passengers.

European Economic Community

Mr. Cronin: asked the Minister of Aviation what consideration he has given to harmonising British policy with regard to air traffic rights with the policies pursued by the Common Market countries.

Mr. Woodhouse: There does not yet exist a common policy of the Common Market countries on traffic rights, and aviation is at present excluded from the scope of the Treaty of Rome. The question does not, therefore at present arise, but my Department will watch future developments carefully.

Mr. Cronin: Is it not the case that, in practice, the Common Market countries very carefully and closely integrate their air traffic rights, whereas our system is one of free-for-all competition between the corporations and the private air companies? Will not that present us with considerable difficulty if and when we enter the Common Market?

Mr. Woodhouse: I think that at present it is likely to present greater difficulties to the Common Market countries themselves who, so far from having integrated their practices, are in a number of cases pursuing radically different lines of policy in the matter. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we shall watch this position most carefully, but there is no sign at all that the Council of the Community regards it as a question of urgency.

Navigational Aids

Mr. John Hall: asked the Minister of Aviation what representations he has made to the International Civil Aviation Organisation about the introduction of a standard international air navigation system following the recommendation of the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations that the Decca system HARCO be tested for use in this field.

Mr. Woodhouse: Arrangements are now being made by the Eurocontrol Association to test whether HARCO satisfies the Eurocontol specification of an area coverage system. It would be premature to make any approaches to the International Civil Aviation Organisation pending the outcome of these tests.

Mr. Hall: Is my hon. Friend aware that the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations was well aware a the fact that Eurocontrol was carrying out an investigation of the system when the International Federation made its own investigation, and recommended that the International Civil Aviation Organisation should carry out its own tests now, because it was thought essential from the point of view of air safety? Will not my hon. Friend at least support those recommendations in the interests of air safety, because it is an urgent matter and one of great interest to the country?

Mr. Woodhouse: I am aware of the resolution passed by the organisation—which, I suppose, we must pronounce "IFALPA"—but the fact is that I.C.A.O. does not conduct tests and, in any case, it has taken a decision on standardisation which remains valid until 1975. However, my right hon. Friend has been in touch with B.A.L.P.A.—the British component of the International Federation—which is aware of what we are doing in seeking to get HARCO tested with Eurocontrol, and has agreed that this is the best way to attempt to approach standardisation on a larger scale.

Mr. Hall: But is not my hon. Friend aware that the original decision taken by the International Civil Aviation Organisation is now under question,

and that there is some doubt whether that organisation was right to take its decision. Is it not time, therefore, to press for a reopening of the whole matter?

Mr. Woodhouse: It is quite possible that the time will come, before the present standardisation runs out, to press for a reconsideration, but not before HARCO has been fully tested by use with Eurocontrol. If it were to be approved and adopted by Eurocontrol, that would automatically entail reopening the case with I.C.A.O.

Dr. Bennett: asked the Minister of Aviation what conclusions he has reached on the future employment of Dectra, following the success of its trials by the Aircraft Armament and Experimental Unit at Boscombe Down.

Mr. Woodhouse: No conclusion has yet been reached. Further development of Dectra is necessary before the system could be put forward for adoption as a standard aid.

Dr. Bennett: As this scheme has been operating and has been checked and used to high degrees of accuracy for some five years, can my hon. Friend say how much longer he will take to get ahead with it so that we may be able to compete with the Americans, who are working hard to overhaul us?

Mr. Woodhouse: It depends to some extent on how fast the Decca Company is able to complete the programme of development. The conclusion from the tests so far is that Dectra is not sufficiently developed for the purposes for which it is intended.

Mr. Lee: Will the Parliamentary Secretary make it quite clear that we are concerned that the best types of instruments shall be in standard use, and that we are not happy in the least if heavy economic power is to be the determining factor rather than the accuracy of the instruments?

Mr. Woodhouse: I share that view with the hon. Gentleman. I have no grounds to think that heavy economic power determines the question with regard to either HARCO or Dectra.

Dr. Bennett: asked the Minister of Aviation what success he has lately enjoyed in securing the acceptance of British systems of aerial navigation as against their foreign rivals.

Mr. Woodhouse: There has been no opportunity of securing the acceptance of a British system since 1959.

Dr. Bennett: Was not 1959 rather a clear demonstration of the British trumpet sounding a most uncertain note, so that only the Americans prepared for the battle? Will my hon. Friend do his best in the forthcoming negotiations to give rather stronger support to this country's manufacturers than has been given hitherto?

Mr. Woodhouse: I would not accept that the decision in 1959 was due to pusillanimity on the part of the British Government, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall in the future, as we have in the past, do everything that is reasonably possible to ensure that decisions on navigational aids are taken on the merits of the various products and not on political grounds.

Mr. John Hall: Is it not a fact that the decision of 1959 was taken on considerations other than those purely concerned with safety in the air, and, as I said earlier, is this not the time again to raise the whole matter?

Mr. Woodhouse: I have explained why this is not the moment to raise the whole matter again. It would be better to wait until HARCO has passed its tests with Eurocontrol. The decision taken in 1959 was, as the House has been told by my right hon. Friend's predecessor, one which we very much regretted, but it is impossible for us to break up an international organisation because we regret one of its decisions.

Commander Courtney: asked the Minister of Aviation what request he has received for assistance from Aeroflot in connection with the proposed adoption by the Soviet authorities of the Dectra system in conjunction with the North Atlantic traffic control.

Mr. Woodhouse: None, Sir.

Commander Courtney: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that great interest has been taken for some years past

by the Soviet authorities in the Decca Dectra system? Does he appreciate that a decision is imminent and is likely to be taken shortly at high level in Russia? If this decision goes the right way, and we all hope that it will, does my hon. Friend—notwithstanding the earlier reply he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett)—not think it a little invidious that the Russians should adopt, on technical grounds alone, a British system of navigation when our own Ministry is so conspicuously lacking in giving the support we all expect for the system?

Mr. Woodhouse: That supplementary question sounded like a series of hypotheses. I cannot answer for a decision of the Russians about which we have received no information at all. I am aware that they have expressed interest in Dectra to the company, and if we are asked for our help in promoting a sale to the Soviet Union we shall of course give it

Aircraft Safety

Mr. Rankin: asked the Minister of Aviation what research is being conducted into the relative safety of jet and piston-engined aircraft.

Mr. Woodhouse: Studies of aircraft accident statistics are made over a wide area, and include comparisons between types of aircraft where these suggest lines of research which may increase safety. The causes of accidents to individual aircraft are also minutely investigated, but such studies not do suggest any valid basis for generalisations about the relative safety of jet and piston-engined aircraft.

Mr. Rankin: Is it not time to try to evaluate these relative safeties, in view of the fact that so far in 1962 half of the fatalities have been incurred by jet aircraft? Does not that give the Minister some food for thinking about inquiring into the relative safety of the two types of aircraft?

Mr. Woodhouse: It does, of course, give us great cause for anxiety, and it is a problem that we have under review continuously, but the fact is that these large jet aircraft have been in service for only a short time, whereas the pistonengined aircraft, even the largest of


them, have been in service for a very long time. That makes it extremely difficult to make valid comparisons between them. The accidents that have occurred in 1962 have been most disquieting, but, as an example of the impossibility of basing generalisations on them, I would point out that one of the most disastrous of them all is now generally thought to have been due to sabotage, which is not something that is confined to one particular type of aircraft.

Mr. Rankin: But did not the Minister suggest on Thursday that we might prevent accidents by applying the I.C.A.O. standards to the older aircraft? Does he remember that when I put that very point on 14th May his right hon. Friend took the opposite view and pointed out that the older types of aircraft were safer than many of the new types? Why, then, apply the modern standards to the safer aircraft?

Mr. Woodhouse: It is quite true that some of the older aircraft, such as the Dakota, to which we were then referring, have an extremely good air safety record. The point I made in my speech, to which the hon. Gentleman now draws attention, was that those aircraft came into service before the present standards were laid down and that it was, therefore, impossible absolutely and exactly to apply the modern standards to them. What we are now seeking to do is progressively to apply some of the modern standards to the alder aircraft where they are relevant to the type of construction, which now goes back some thirty years.

Freighter Aircraft

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: asked the Minister of Aviation What is the estimated total design and development cost of the Short Belfast freighter aircraft.

Mr. Woodhouse: In accordance with normal practice, I cannot disclose estimates of 'this kind.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Can my hon. Friend confirm, without disclosing the magnitude of the figure, that it is between a third and a half of the cost which one would normally associate with developing an aircraft of that type? Is this not one of the many advantages which recommends this aircraft for more

fields than that merely of British military requirements?

Mr. Woodhouse: I cannot, for the reasons I have already given, confirm my hon. Friend's estimate, but I certainly agree with him that the aircraft is suitable for many kinds of requirements. It is a matter of regret to us that the hopes originally entertained by the firm for foreign civil sales did not materialise.

Mr. McMaster: asked the Minister of Aviation what are his plans for the ordering of freighter aircraft to meet the tactical and strategic needs of the armed services over the next five to seven years.

Mr. Woodhouse: As regards tactical aircraft, the Argosy is already entering R.A.F. service and, as the House knows, my right hon. Friend is also ordering a military version of the Avro 748, now known as the Avro 780. The Belfast has been ordered to meet the strategic freighter needs. Proposals for a tactical freighter aircraft as a possible replacement for the Beverley and Hastings are under consideration.

Mr. McMaster: Is my hon. Friend aware that an aeroplane takes six or seven years to develop but that by using the existing types, as recommended in the Defence White Paper—and by the use of advances, such as laminar flow —the Belfast aircraft could be developed and be capable of lifting such heavy loads of Chieftain tanks or carrying 25 tons for 8,000 miles? Would it not be advisable to expedite a decision on the needs of the Army over the next five to seven years so that the planes are ready when the Army needs them?

Mr. Woodhouse: Yes, the potentialities of the Belfast will certainly be very carefully considered on the lines my hon. Friend has suggested. They are being so considered. So, similarly, we have to consider the potentialities of rival aircraft for the same requirements. I think that my hon. Friend can rest assured that there is no danger of the Army's needs not being met in time.

Mr. Cronin: Is it not the case, however, that the R.A.F. simply does not possess at present an efficient strategic freighter aircraft? Will not the Parliamentary Secretary, for that reason,


give more attention to this than he has indicated in his previous replies?

Mr. Woodhouse: I think that my previous replies indicated that we are giving close attention to this.

Mrs. McLaughlin: Has the Parliamentary Secretary had any discussions recently with Short Brothers and Harland on this matter? My understanding of the situation from people concerned in the area is that the Belfast aircraft could be developed in very many ways but that the difficulty at the moment is that no one knows what development there should be or what will be required. If my hon. Friend could give some idea on the matter, we should indeed be grateful.

Mr. Woodhouse: I cannot attempt to define the requirements here in the House, but we are in continuous consultation with Short Brothers and Harland.

Permanent Secretary (Qualifications)

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: asked the Minister of Aviation what are the technical qualifications of the Permanent Secretary of his Department; and what is his previous experience in the field of aviation.

Mr. Woodhouse: The qualifications required of a Permanent Secretary of a Government Department are that he should have those qualities of mind and character and that breadth of managerial and administrative experience which fit a man for the highest posts.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Will he now do me the courtesy of answering the Question on the Order Paper?

Mr. Woodhouse: The qualifications required of the head of a Civil Service Department are not technical in the sense of being related to aviation or whatever may be the particular function of the Department. They are administrative. The Department has a large number of very competent technical staff who work under a Permanent Secretary and technical problems are in their hands.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

Contributions and Benefits

Mr. McKay: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will take steps to reconstruct the financing of the National Insurance Fund by charging the contributions on a percentage basis, supported by a supplementary payment similar to that now paid by the Exchequer; and if he will take steps to concentrate additional benefits on the payment of higher retirement pensions, sickness and unemployment benefits, and widows basic rate, whilst requiring all persons with incomes above £9 or £10 per week to pay to a graded pension scheme, and whilst leaving all the dependants' benefits stationary until the new scheme has been implemented.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): No, Sir.

Mr. McKay: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that I had no hope whatever of his giving much consideration to a question such as this because he believes in retired pensioners having to undertake a means test? Does he not realise that the time has come for a different policy to be adopted towards these aged folk if they are to have anything like security? Is he aware that on the last occasion he gave 7s. 6d. to the pensioners he placed Is. 6d. extra on the National Insurance contributions of ordinary people and that it would take about 8s. 6d. extra to give a £5 pension? Has the time not arrived when a pension of £5 should be aimed at for aged people, although it will never be achieved under the present system?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman is not entitled to draw from my answer the inference with which he began his supplementary question. On the merits of the matter, apart from any other difficulties, I should find it very difficult to go with him in the proposal which he makes, that when the time for increases comes, dependants—for example, the children of widowed mothers—should be excluded from such increases.

Mr. McKay: rose—

Mr. Speaker: We really must pass to the next Question.

National Assistance (House Repairs)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what steps he proposes to take to help pensioners living in decontrolled houses who are being compelled to pay for repairs, as such payments are not taken into account for National Assistance purposes.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: None, Sir. The Board tells me that if a tenant of decontrolled property who is receiving assistance is known to be responsible for repairs and insurance, allowance can be made for this in assessing his grant. If the hon. Member has a particular case in mind, perhaps he would write to me or to the Chairman of the Board.

Mr. Allaun: Is the Minister aware that I have here a letter from an old-age pensioner tenanting a decontrolled house, who has not the money to mend a leaking roof and who is frightened to report it to the public health inspector for fear of eviction? What advice can the right hon. Gentleman give this old lady? If the National Assistance Board pays rent increases arising from the operation of the Rent Act, should not the Board pay this kind of expense as well?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I cannot advise the hon. Gentleman unless he sends me details of the case. If he will be good enough to send me the details I will gladly study them. I have stated the general rule in my main answer.

Old-age Pensioners, Easington (Assistance)

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many old-age pensioners are in receipt of National Assistance in the area covered by the Easington Parliamentary division.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): I regret that this information is not available as the Parliamentary Division of Easington is served by three offices of the National Assistance Board which also serve areas in other divisions.

Mr. Shinwell: Is it not possible to analyse the number of cases at the various offices? Why should not this

information be available? Is the hon. Lady aware that we are becoming very worried about the number of cases of hardship brought to our notice? In those circumstances, is it not possible to step up the National Assistance payments so as to relieve the hardship experienced by many of these pensioners?

Mrs. Thatcher: We could not possibly analyse the payments by any statistical process. It would mean a separate count. I can give the right hon. Gentleman the figures for the three offices which serve his division and areas around it.

Mr. Shinwell: That is all I asked for.

Mrs. Thatcher: The figures for the three offices—which is not the Question asked by the right hon. Gentleman—are: Houghton-le-Spring, Durham and Hartlepool, totalling 8,494.

Mr. Shinwell: That is exactly the information that I am trying to get. Does it not denote that the pension is completely insufficient? It is no use the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head in that negative way. Will he come and listen to the tales that we hear about the difficulties experienced by these people? Is he aware that we are not going to put up with this sort of thing very much longer?

Mrs. Thatcher: I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is disappointed that my right hon. Friend is not answering his Question, but I do not think his conclusions follow from his premise.

War Pensioners

Mr. Spriggs: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many war pensioners have suffered a reduction in or lost their pensions outright in each of the last five years; what were the reasons; and what guidance is given to pensions tribunals in such cases.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As the answer includes a table of figures, I will, with permission, circulate this in the OFFICIAL REPORT. The reasons were that their medical condition had improved to an extent which made them no longer eligible for pension, or for as much pension. As regards the last part of the Question, pensions appeal tribunals are independent statutory bodies


appointed by my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, and I neither have nor ought to have, any power to give guidance to them.

Mr. Spriggs: Ought not the Minister and the Government to take into consideration that many ex-Service men returning home from military hospitals after being badly wounded can no longer follow their occupations and have to take up light duty types of employment? Will the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friends bear in mind this fact when they next consider pensions for this type of ex-Service pensioner?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: We not only have considered this but we have already in operation the allowance for lowered standard of occupation to take care of just that situation.

Following are the figures:


—
(1)
(2)
(3)



Pensions reduced
Pensions replaced by a final award for a limited period (included in col. (1))
Pensions terminated as a result of improvement in the pensioned disablement


1957
…
31,587
9,125
3,048


1958
…
27,972
8,218
2,075


1959
…
23,047
6,009
679


1960
…
11,568
3,011
218


1961
…
6,762
1,651
97

National Assistance Books

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will consider combining the old-age pension and National Assistance books to avoid embarrassing pensioners who dislike showing that they have two books and are receiving National Assistance.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: This suggestion has often been considered. It has the practical disadvantage that whenever the National Assistance order book has to be withdrawn for amendment the pensioner would be unable to cash his retirement pension. I would add that there are many people apart from recipients of National Assistance who present more than one order book for payment at post offices.

Mr. Allaun: Does the Minister agree that there are very many old-age pensioners in real need of National Assistance but who do not apply for it for the reason given in the Question, even if the Minister thinks that it is a case of mistaken pride that they do not like showing two books in the post office? Surely it is not beyond his wit to devise some way of overcoming any administrative difficulty involved?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have no reason to believe that the obligation to present two books—which is shared by a very large number of people who draw, for example, family allowances, war pensions and industrial injury benefits—has anything to do with the matter. The hon. Gentleman will know that a little time ago, to deal with any difficulty over the presentation of books, we took the words "National Assistance" off the cover. That was a practical measure. I honestly do not think that the hon. Gentleman's present proposal would really help.

Mr. Allaun: I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that there is a slight difference between the National Assistance book and other kinds of books. Whilst he and I may not think it wrong to apply for National Assistance, lots of people think it slightly shameful and therefore they do not like their neighbours who go in the post office to know about this. Could he not overcome this difficulty?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I do not think that a neighbour can spot out of a pile of books that many people bring in that one is a National Assistance book, when it has not even got the words "National Assistance" on it.

Old-age Pensioners

Mrs. Castle: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what reply he has sent to the telegram sent to him by Mr. Melling, Secretary of the National Federation of Old Age Pensioners' Associations, calling for an immediate increase in old-age pensions to meet the increased cost of coal.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: A courteous acknowledgment.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a courteous acknowledgment without any effective action is just no answer at all? Does he not think that the time has come to increase the basic old-age pension? Does not the fact that he has recently increased the National Assistance scales owing to the rise in the cost of living mean by implication that the basic pension ought to be increased for the same reason, or is he busy turning the Welfare State into the Means Test State?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: All Governments have from time to time raised the National Assistance scales at a time when they have not been moving the level of retirement pensions. On the particular point specified in the hon. Lady's Question, on coal prices, a change in retirement pensions would be a singularly inflexible weapon for this purpose when one remembers, first of all, that many retirement pensioners are not in need and, secondly, that coal prices vary throughout the country.

Mr. Houghton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is not only coal that has gone up in price? The cost of living has increased by 6 per cent. since the last increases in National Insurance were made. If I send the right hon. Gentleman a telegram asking him what he is going to do about this, is a courteous acknowledgment all that I will get?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir, I will send the hon. Gentleman a very courteous acknowledgment.

Personal Case

Mr. Spriggs: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many widows of ex-Service war pensioners who have died away from home in Great Britain have been refused financial assistance to have their late husbands brought home for re-interment.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The only application in respect of re-interment known to me is that about which the hon. Member has been in correspondence with my hon. Friend.

Mr. Spriggs: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is not good enough?
Here we have an ex-soldier who came home and was given a 60 per cent. pension. He was unable to work and he died while on his way to Scotland. He was buried in a common grave in the Cockermouth area. Is that the way to treat men who have served their country? This is really shabby treatment and no Government has a right to get away with this. The right hon. Gentleman was asked as a Minister to help to bring this ex-Service man home for reinter-meat so that the widow and her nine children could visit his grave, but only partial assistance was offered. It is not good enough. This widow had not the money to bring her dead husband home. Why is not the Minister prepared to do more about it?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I do not think the hon. Gentleman is being quite fair. The facts of this case, Which I have studied, are that this gentleman unfortunately died away from home and was buried by the local authority, with his widow's consent, in Cumberland. His widow received the National Insurance death grant and, as my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary explained to the hon. Gentleman in a very full letter, there are no powers of which I am aware for the payment under the Royal Warrant of the charge for exhumation and reinterment elsewhere of an ex-Service man. I understand that in this case contact had been made with the voluntary bodies but that they also did not feel that this was an appropriate use for their funds.

Retirement Pensions and National Assistance

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what was the cost of living index when the present rates of retirement pensions and National Assistance were granted; what is the index now; and what the difference represents in money value.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The Index of Retail Prices for April, 1961, when the present rates of retirement pensions and national assistance were first granted, was 113·3 and the index far May, 1962, was 120·1. This represents a difference in money value of 3s. 5d. in the standard pension and 3s. 3d. in the scale rate for a single householder.

Sir B. Janner: Is the Minister aware that it is literally impossible for the people receiving these pensions to manage to make ends meet or to live at all adequately? Is he prepared to do something to meet the situation?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman is simply not facing the facts, first, that when we are dealing with 5½ million retirement pensioners, some well off, some not well off, but a complete cross-section of our community, one cannot effectively make generalisations of that kind, and, secondly, that today the real value o4 the retirement pension is higher than it was at any time before the present scales were introduced.

Mrs. Slater: We are getting tired of this kind of answer. Does not the Minister realise that a 3s. rise in the cost of living is much more serious to people on old-age pensions or widows' benefits than it is to any of us in the House? Does not he agree that the method of giving National Assistance increases while not at the same time raising the basic pension is just not good enough today?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As I am sure the hon. Lady knows, the National Assistance Act provided that National Assistance scales might be moved more quickly and more easily by way of Resolution rather than by legislation for the very reason that it would have to be done more frequently. That was contemplated because National Assistance provides the effective method of dealing with hardship, when action has to be

taken speedily. The hon. Lady is ignoring the whole history of the matter in suggesting that it is National Insurance benefits which should always be moved whenever the Index of Retail Prices moves.

Mr. Nabarro: Is it not a fact that, on every occasion since 1951 when the retirement pension has been raised, the amount of increase in the basic pension has been larger than the increase in the cost of living for the comparable period, all of which has, by aggregation, given a real value of the pension immeasurably higher than at any time since it was inaugurated?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: It is the fact, as my hon. Friend has said, that the real value of the pension today is higher than at any time under any Government before the present scales were introduced.

Mr. Ross: Will the Minister bear in mind that, even though he did announce today that there would be a change, it would probably be four months before it took effect, and, remembering how the cost of living has risen in the past four months, can he say exactly what will be the likely level in another four months?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The first part of the hon. Gentleman's question is wholly hypothetical. As to the second part, I think that questions about the Index of Retail Prices are for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, not for me.

PIPE-LINES BILL [Lords] (ALLOCATION OF TIME)

3.33 p.m.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): I beg to move,

That the following provisions shall apply to the remaining Proceedings on the Pipe-Lines Bill [Lords]:

1.—(1) The Standing Committee to which the Bill is committed shall report the Bill to the House on or before the eighteenth day of July, nineteen hundred and sixty-two.

(2) At a sitting of the Standing Committee at which any Proceedings are to be brought to a conclusion under a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee the Chairman shall not adjourn the Committee under any Order relating to the sittings of the Committee until the Proceedings have been brought to a conclusion.

(3) No dilatory Motion with respect to Proceedings on the Bill or the adjournment of the Standing Committee shall be made in the Standing Committee except by a Member of the Government, and the question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith without any debate.

(4) No Motion shall be made in the Standing Committee relating to the sittings of the Committee except by a Member of the Government and the Chairman shall permit a brief explanatory statement of the reasons for the Motion from the Member who moves, and from a Member who opposes the Motion, and shall then put the question thereon.

(5) On the conclusion of the Proceedings in the Standing Committee on the Bill the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any question.

2. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule, but the recommendations of the Business Sub-Committee may include alterations in the order in which Clauses, Schedules, new Clauses and new Schedules are to be taken in the Standing Committee.

3. The Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in two allotted days, and shall be brought to a conclusion at Seven o'clock on the second of those days; and for the purposes of Standing Order No. 41 (Business Committee) this Order shall be taken to allot to the Proceedings on Consideration such portion of the time on those days given to the Bill by this Order as the Resolution of the Business Committee may determine.

4. The Business Committee shall report to the House their recommendations as to the Proceedings on Consideration of the Bill, and as to the allocation of time between those Proceedings and the Proceedings on Third Reading, not later than the fourth day on which the House sits after the day on which the Chairman of the Standing Committee reports the Bill to the House.

5. On the first allotted day Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) and Standing Order No. 1A (Exemptions from Standing Order No. 1) shall have effect with the substitution of references to half-past Ten o'clock for references to Ten o'clock; and Proceedings which under any Resolution of the Business Committee are to be brought to a conclusion on that day shall not be interrupted under the provisions of the said Standing Order No. 1.

6. If, on the first allotted day, a Motion is made under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), paragraph 5 of this Order shall not apply, but—

(a) any Proceedings on the Bill exempted under paragraph (2) of that Standing Order shall be so exempted for the period mentioned in that paragraph and a further half hour; and
(b) the bringing to a conclusion of any Proceedings on the Bill which, under any Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion on that day at any time after Seven o'clock shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the said Motion under Standing Order No. 9.

7. If, at Seven o'clock on an allotted day, any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or a Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion at or before that time have not been concluded, any Motion for the adjournment of the House under the said Standing Order No. 9 which, apart from this Order, would stand over to that time shall stand over until those Proceedings have been concluded.

8.—(1) Any private business which has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock on the first allotted day shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion of the Proceedings on the Bill on that day, and shall be exempted by this paragraph from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for a period of three hours, or, if the Proceedings on the Bill are concluded before half-past Ten o'clock, for a period (from Ten o'clock) equal to the time elapsing between Seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.

(2) Paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking private business) and paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance) shall not apply to any private business exempted by this paragraph.

9. Standing Order No. 12 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business) shall not apply to an allotted day.

10. On an allotted day no dilatory Motion with respect to Proceedings on the Bill shall be made except by a Member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith without any debate.

11. For the purpose of bringing to a conclusion any Proceedings which, under a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or of the Business Committee, or under this Order.


are to be brought to a conclusion at a particular time and have not previously been concluded, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall, at that time, put forthwith the Question on any amendment or Motion already proposed from the Chair and, in the case of a new Clause or new Schedule which has been read a second time, also the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill, and subject thereto shall proceed to put forthwith the Question on any amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules moved by a Member of the Government of which notice has been given (but no other amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules) and any Question necessary for the disposal of the Business to be concluded, and, in the case of any amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules moved by a Member of the Government, he shall put only the Question that the amendment he made or that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.

12.—(l) The proceedings on any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order or of a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or of the Business Committee shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion two hours after they have been commenced and paragraph 11 of this Order shall, so far as applicable, apply as if the proceedings were Proceedings on the Bill:

Provided that if the Proceedings are interrupted by a Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), the time at which they are to be brought to a conclusion shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the Motion for the adjournment.

(2) If a Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order or of a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or of the Business Committee is under consideration at Seven o'clock on a day on which any private business has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock, the private business shall stand over and be considered when the Proceedings on the Motion have been concluded and shall be exempted from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for a period equal to the time for which it so stands over.

13. Nothing in this Order or in a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or of the Business Committee shall—

(a) prevent any Proceedings to which the Order or Resolution applies from being taken or completed earlier than is required by the Order or Resolution; or
(b) prevent any business (whether on the Bill or not) from being proceeded with on any day after the completion of all such Proceedings on the Bill as are to be taken on that day.

14.—(1) References in this Order to Proceedings on Consideration or Proceedings on Third Reading include references to Proceedings, at those stages respectively, for, or in consequence of, re-committal.

(2) On an allotted day no debate shall be permitted on any Motion to re-commit the Bill

(whether as a whole or otherwise), and Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith any Question necessary to dispose of the Motion, including the Question on any amendment moved to such Question.

(3) On the conclusion of any Proceedings in Committee of the whole House on re-committal of the Bill (whether as a whole or otherwise), the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.

15. In this Order "allotted day" means any day (other than a Friday) on which the Bill is put down as the first Government Order of the day; "the Bill" means the Pipe-lines Bill [Lords]; "Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee" means a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee as agreed to by the Standing Committee; and "Resolution of the Business Committee" means a Resolution of the Business Committee as agreed to by the House.

I may as well make the point because, if I do not, it will certainly be made for me, that this is the third such Motion this Session—

Mr. E. G. Willis: Hear, hear.

Mr. Macleod: —I thought so—applying to five Bills, and that is quite a lot of Bills. The point was also made in a leading article in The Times on Saturday to which, no doubt, reference will be made. I do not know who wrote the article, but I know where it was written. It was written in one of those ivory towers which are occasionally erected in Printing House Square and which provide at times a very distant view of Westminster. Frankly, the ordinary facts of parliamentary life are very different.
I think that everyone will agree with what is said in The Times, that
it does not do to skimp discussion
of a number of important matters during the Committee stage; but, with repect, that is not quite the point. The point is, what action does the Government take if, instead of discussing these important matters, the Committee prefers to spend, for example, four hours on the first sittings Motion, or if it goes on to spend 20 hours—I remind the House that this is equivalent to three full days and more on the Floor of the House—on Clause 1?
I think that those who attended the Committee may, perhaps, agree with what was said by the Minister at 3 a.m. on 6th June:
There seems almost no limit to the time that hon. Gentlemen opposite will spend in recapitulating and repeating all the arguments


they adduced on earlier Amendments which have now been dealt with."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 6th June, 1962; c. 616.]
In this sort of situation, the classic conflict of Parliamentary democracy arises. It is not by accident that it has arisen here. It is the intention of the Opposition to bring it about. I make no complaint whatever about that. I am fairly clear that I should have done the same myself in their place. But what we have to decide in the circumstances is the balance which we should try to draw between the right of a minority to have their say and that of the majority to have their way. This is the true question which one debates today and which one always debates on Motions of this kind. Always, of course, the onus of proof is on the Government and must remain there until it is discharged, as I hope to do.
Some people would go a great deal further in applying the Guillotine to such Measures where there is contention and where arguments, perhaps, about nationalisation take place. Perhaps I may remind the House—this is my only quotation from previous debates—of what was said by the Leader of the Opposition in his final speech on the Gas Bill on 13th May, 1948, addressing himself to my right hon. and hon. Friends on that Committee.

Mr. Willis: He did not mention the Guillotine.

Mr. Macleod: Yes, he did.

Mr. Willis: But he did not introduce it.

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to quote any more from the leading article in The Times, or is that the only reference he intends to make?

Mr. Macleod: I may refer to it again in passing, but that was the only direct quotation I had in mind to make.

Mr. Mendelson: Then we will help the right hon. Gentleman later.

Mr. Macleod: I thought so. That is why I introduced the subject.
The Leader of the Opposition, addressing my right hon. and hon. Friends

on the occasion to which I have referred, said:
They have achieved something, perhaps surprising even to themselves, but something of some importance. They have convinced every hon. Member of the Committee, and, I venture to say, every member of my party and an important circle of persons beyond, that never again should a Bill of this kind be committed to a Committee without having a Guillotine Resolution. The consequences of this may be far-reaching indeed."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 13th May, 1948; c. 2185.]
That, obviously, goes a great deal further than anything which has been suggested by this side of the House. The Opposition will, no doubt, remember—again, this is fair—that they practised what they preached, because the Iron and Steel Bill in November, 1948, following on what the Leader of the Opposition then said, was introduced with a Guillotine before there was a single discussion in Committee.
It is not in order, on Motions of this kind, to discuss the merits of a Bill, but I think that it is agreed that this Bill has been long foreshadowed. It was included in the Queen's Speech. In Committee, my right hon. Friend the Minister has made a patient search for its passage by orderly means. It is an important Bill, and it is important also, in the Government's view, that it should be passed this Session.
This is the first time that we have proposed to legislate generally about the control and development of pipelines. Industrial pipelines are not particularly new. There are a number in existence. But the numbers, the extent and the use of those which are likely to be laid make it necessary to secure their orderly development. I do not think that this is in dispute. What is in dispute between the two sides of the House is whether this should be done as in the way provided for in the Bill, or, to quote the words of the Opposition's Amendment on Second Reading,
… by public enterprise in accordance with a policy of planned economic expansion … "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th May, 1962; Vol. 659, c. 459.]
That is the basic conflict between the two sides of the House.
The House will know that almost exactly two years ago the Select Committee on the Esso Petroleum Company Bill recommended that no further Private


Bills for the construction of pipelines should be passed by the House. Only a little over a year ago another Private Bill was introduced, but was withdrawn when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power gave an assurance that he would hold discussions with a view to legislation being introduced as soon as possible. We know that a number of other firms are planning projects, and it is likely—indeed I take it as certain—that, if it had not been for the decision to withdraw last year's Private Bill, they would have promoted other Private Bills this Session. Even if the Government's Bill is passed this Session, it will be some time before these applications can be dealt with.
The position as I see it is this. This is a Measure on which there is at least one basic point of difference, enshrined in the Opposition's Amendment on Second Reading, between the two sides of the House and which arouses echoes of the many controversies that there have been about private or public ownership. May I try, I hope not unfairly, to summarise the attitude of the Opposition towards the Bill. They do not like it and they have no intention of helping the Government—again I make no complaint about this—to put the Bill on the Statute Book.
There are, therefore, three choices. We can wait to get the Bill in the time that the Opposition think right, which, in practical terms, the House will recognise is never; or an Allocation of Time Motion must be put forward; or—and no doubt this is the course which the Opposition would prefer—the Government could drop the Bill.
I do not propose to talk in detail about the Motion. It follows common form throughout, I think, and I do not think that there are any special points Which I need draw to the attention of the House. It makes use of the Business Sub-Committee as well as the Business Committee. If the Opposition take part in the discussions, it would be normal for their proposals, if they are at all reasonable, to be accepted by the Government.
The Committee upstairs has already had 15 sittings on the Bill, including one all-night sitting and one which lasted until about 3.30 in the morning. It is not for me to say how many more

sittings will be suggested by the Business Sub-Committee, in the time which is available between now and Wednesday, 18th July, but, assuming that the Committee proposes something like six more sittings, there will have been 21 sittings in Committee, including one all-night sitting and one lasting until 3.30 a.m. I do not believe that that is inadequate time in Committee for a Bill of this nature. It is certainly not out of line with previous Bills or with previous Allocation of Time Motions introduced from both sides of the House.
It is true—and I think that I should make this point because I believe it to be the weakest; I think that it is the only comparatively weak point in my case—that the Bill was introduced late and that this Motion has been proposed late in the Session. I acknowledge that. I wish that it had been possible to arrange matters in some other way, but, again, it would not be at all difficult, I assure the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin), to quote precedents for that and for Allocation of Time Motions being introduced even later in July than this one.
In short, this is a Bill to which we attach importance. It is an important part of this year's programme. It was given a special place in the Queen's Speech and has had very considerable discussion in Parliament. It is thoroughly disliked by the Opposition. The Government have to recognise that fact and to consider What it is right for them to do. There can be no question of the position now before the House. Everyone who has studied what has happened upstairs—I suppose that most people listening now have done that, either through being a member of the Committee or by reading the reports of the proceedings—will realise that the Opposition were determined, and, within their rights, properly determined, to use to the utmost their power of parliamentary obstruction. This Motion is the result.
I said earlier—I do not doubt the correctness of this—that this is an illustration of the classic dilemma of Parliamentary discussion. Either we accept the situation as it has been created upstairs and bow to it by withdrawing the Bill, or we ask the House to accept an Allocation of Time Motion. Because of


the time which has been devoted to the Bill, because of the importance which the Government attach to it and because of the importance of getting legislation on this matter, which makes an important contribution to the economic growth of the country, on the Statute Book as soon as possible, we believe that we are right to push on with the Bill and, accordingly, to ask the House to accept the Motion.

3.46 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: The Leader of the House repeated himself by saying that this Motion represents the classic conflict of Parliamentary democracy. He went on to express it in this way, that it is the right of the minority to have their say and the right of the majority to have their way. The majority in this case would appear to those of us sitting on these benches to be represented by Shell, B.P. and Esso.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the onus was on the Government to make the case for the Motion. About two sentences later he said, "I will say nothing more about the Motion". Up to that time he had not said anything at all about it. He has told us about the time taken by the Standing Committee in discussing the Bill. I should have thought that, in commending the Motion to the House, it was the duty of the right hon. Gentleman to show whether it was reasonable to ask the Standing Committee to do the work still outstanding on the Bill within the time limit set out in the Motion. But the right hon. Gentleman did not make any attempt to do that.
The Leader of the House told us that there had been 15 sittings on the Bill so far and that he thought that we might reasonably have another six sittings within the timetable Motion, making a total of 21 sittings. He thought that 21 sittings constituted a reasonable time to spend on the Bill. But that is not the complaint I am making. My complaint is that the Minister failed to realise how much of the Bill still has to be considered by the Standing Committee and haw little time is allowed in the Motion to undertake the remaining work.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the Bill was long foreshadowed. Then he admitted in an aside that the Bill was

introduced fairly late in the Session. I wonder whether hon. Members realise that it is only two months since the House received the Bill. It is bad enough to impose a timetable Motion at the beginning of May, which is when we got the Bill, but to impose one in the middle of July in the hope that the Bill will reach the Statute Book before we rise for the Summer Recess is quite unjustified. This is a ridiculous way to treat what the right hon. Gentleman is still pleased to call a parliamentary democracy.
The first paragraph of the Motion, which the right hon. Gentleman said he did not want to discuss, states:
The Standing Committee … shall report the Bill to the House on or before the eighteenth day of July, nineteen hundred and sixty-two.
That is Wednesday of next week. Paragraph 3 states that the House will be allowed one-and-a-half days for the Report Stage and Third Reading of the Bill.
The right hon. Gentleman will, I think, be willing to consider with me how much work is still outstanding on the Bill. Does he realise that we still have 52 Clauses and six Schedules——

Mr. Willis: And 60 Government Amendments.

Mr. Fraser: —that we have not started to consider? This is a Bill which the right hon. Gentleman admits to be breaking new ground. Of course, it is an important Bill and it breaks new ground. We have had pipelines for a very long time, but here we have a Bill which enables the Minister to grant monopoly public utility powers to private enterprise companies without any safeguards for the public interest.
That is the kind of Bill it is, and that kind of Bill should be properly discussed. I do not think that any responsible Government would have introduced the Bill in its present form, but if any Government claiming to be responsible were to introduce it they certainly should have done so much earlier in the Session than early in May.
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Bill was in another place a little while before that and that it had a rough passage. The Government suffered one of their infrequent defeats


in a vote in the other place on a Timetable on the Bill because they tried to do in another place what they are doing here. They tried to rush the Bill through with inadequate discussion, but their Lordships, even those sitting on the Tory benches, would not have it. We have to wait until later today, I suppose, to see whether the Whips are any more successful in this House than they are in another place.
There are 52 Clauses and six Schedules to the Bill as it was introduced still to be dealt with. There are 23 new Clauses on the Notice Paper, 10 of them in the name of the Minister, six in the names of Opposition Members and seven in the names of Government supporters. There are 23 new Clauses to be considered. Of the Amendments on the Notice Paper, the Minister is responsible for 62 of them. Forty-nine were put down by my hon. Friends and 29 by Government supporters, a total of 140 Amendments. I should add that one new Schedule has been put down by a Government supporter.
We have 75 Clauses still to be considered. Twenty-three of them have to be considered for their Second Reading. There are 140 Amendments on the Notice Paper and many more, I have no doubt, would have gone down from both sides of the Committee had the Standing Committee been given a proper opportunity of considering the Bill. Does the Minister think that this work can be done between now and Wednesday of next week? As we are called upon to report on or before Wednesday of next week, it is clear that we will have to complete our work on the Bill not later than Tuesday of next week. So we have one week in which to do all this work.
I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that it is unreasonable to ask a Standing Committee of the House of Commons to do that. It is impossible for the Standing Committee to consider the Clauses of the Bill, to consider the Amendments which have been put down to the Clauses, and quite impossible for the Standing Committee to consider the new Clauses which have been put down by the Minister, let alone to give any consideration to the new Clauses put down by other hon. Members on both sides of the Standing Committee.
Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that that is the matter to which he might have devoted some of his time in commending the Motion to the House? He said that the onus of proof was on the Government. Does he not recognise that the Government have the responsibility of convincing the House of Commons that this proposition is reasonable—or is he ashamed of it? Does he realise that it is not a reasonable proposition?
There are only three sitting days for the Standing Committee between now and Tuesday of next week—that is, tomorrow, Thursday and the following Tuesday. The normal practice would be to have one sitting each day. Even if we have what the Minister suggested —six sittings—we will have a total of 15 hours. The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have to allow 10 minutes in each sitting for the Chair simply to put the Questions. That lops off one hour, leaving us with 14 hours.
If we had only five minutes to each of the 140 Amendments on the Notice, Paper—and that would not be time-wasting, debate; after all, half of the Amendments have been put down by the Minister and are surely worthy of five minutes' discussion—that would take 12 hours, leaving two hours for 75 clauses and seven Schedules.

Mr. William Ross: What about voting?

Mr. Fraser: My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) prompts me about voting. If we took the trouble to vote on all the Amendments, the whole of the 15 hours would be taken up by having votes. We would then have no discussion at all. This is the most ludicrous Motion I have ever known to be put before the House. [Interruption.] I wish that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) would keep quite for a little while. If he had been anxious, perhaps he would have got on to the Committee and we would have given him all the time he wanted. We are having this Motion because, presumably, Government supporters are unwilling to do a bit of overtime.

Mr. Willis: They are unwilling to sit all night.

Mr. Fraser: We are willing to carry on with the proper consideration of the


Bill. As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has said, we went on until twenty minutes to nine in the morning on one occasion and on other nights until 3.30 a.m. What we were not willing to do was to sit back and allow the Minister to put the Bill through without proper discussion and without giving us answers to questions.
When a Standing Committee spends a long is on a Bill or on any part of it, it is not necessarily because the Opposition are being unreasonable. It may well be because the Minister has been unreasonable, because he sat back with the kind of smile he is now wearing, looked at the hon. Members on the Opposition side of the Committee, paid no attention to any word they said and then, after listening to a few speeches, got up and uttered a few sentences, either in support of a Government Amendment or a Clause in the Bill or in opposition to a Opposition Amendment, without any reference to the argument advanced in support of the Amendment from the Opposition benches.
When a Minister treats the Opposition with that profound discourtesy—and it is the most profound discourtesy on the part of a Minister in charge of a Bill to ignore completely the case being made by the other side—nothing is more calculated to destroy our democracy. That is how the Minister treated the Opposition at sitting after sitting. That is one of the reasons why we made such slow progress on the Bill.
In a democracy, there must be an assumption that when we get over the fundamental issue that separates the two sides of the House of Commons or of the Standing Committee, hon. Members who sit on the Opposition benches will sometimes be able to make a suggestion which is calculated to improve the Bill. I could give the Minister a list of Amendments that were moved during the proceedings on the Bill so far, Amendments that were lifted directly from other legislation for the purpose of making the Bill clearer and of making it a little more comprehensible and understandable than it is now.
On every occasion, the Minister simply pushed us aside as if we were putting a monstrous proposal before the Committee. The Minister could have

eased very considerably the process of the Committee's examination of the Bill if he had just sometimes admitted that Opposition Members did not talk nonsense all the time; but he never did, and so we on our side say it is the Minister's fault.
But whether it was the Opposition in the Standing Committee who were to blame for the time taken on the first 10 Clauses of the Bill, or whether it was the Minister, I come back to this point, that the timetable Motion should be set aside unless the Leader of the House can assure the House, in inviting hon. Members to adopt the Motion, that reasonable time will be allowed by the Motion for the future consideration of the Bill. No matter who is to blame for what has gone on up to now, up to last Thursday, in the Standing Committee, the right hon. Gentleman cannot deny, nor can any Member in any part of the House, that the Standing Committee appointed by the House to consider the provisions of the Bill is now being asked to report within a timetable which makes it impossible for the Committee to do its work.
It may be that the right hon. Gentleman may say that I might have put down an Amendment to this Motion, an Amendment to delay the Committee's reporting by a few days, but he will realise that it could have been only a few days. I said during questions on business last week—and I did not know what would be in this Motion—that I did not think it reasonable to expect that the remaining provisions of the Bill and the new Clauses could be considered adequately this month. I do not. I do not think that they can be considered adequately this month. The only proper thing to do with a Bill of this importance—and it is because of its importance—is for the Government to withdraw the Bill, and, if they are so minded, to introduce a similar Bill at the beginning of next Session.
After all, the right hon. Gentleman and his Government have had lots of experience of withdrawing important Bills after they have proceeded quite far along, thought not to the end of, their courses through both Houses. They have withdrawn a good many Bills which were very much wanted by many workers, and they have, because of the


pressure of time, withdrawn them much earlier in the Session than this. They have withdrawn them on the ground that they did not have time to get them on the Statute Book. It must be that on this occasion those who wish the Bill have a greater influence with the Government than those who, for instance, wanted the Shops Bill a few months ago.

Mr. Ross: Or the Weights and Measures Bill.

Mr. Fraser: Or the Weights and Measures Bill.
The House should realise that on this occasion the Minister, in presenting the Motion to the House, is inviting us to choose between having a Bill which is properly discussed and having a Bill which is passed this Session. The Government have decided that it is much more important to have the Bill passed this Session than to allow our normal democratic practices to function. I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have been ashamed of himself. The right hon. Gentleman has sometimes earned some kind of reputation for being a good democrat.

Mr. Ross: Where?

Mr. Fraser: In his party.

Mr. Ross: Oh.

Mr. Fraser: Not outside, but in his party; but even outside his party he is an erstwhile protagonist of the brotherhood of man. I remember one of his television appearances when he had quite a lot to say about democracy and about treating all sections of the community equally and fairly.
On this occasion, however, we have a Bill which makes great changes, a Bill which introduces, I believe for the first time, the concept of a private company being given public utility powers without being in any way answerable to Parliament or to any public authority. The Minister has been so anxious to avoid any responsibility for looking after the public interest, to avoid seeing that Members of Parliament would be enabled to looking after the public interest, that he has rejected proposals that decisions he might make would come before Parliament for approval, and he has even refused to write into

the provisions of the Bill any requirement that he, in making his decisions, would have to pay attention to the public interest.
This is a very important Bill indeed. It gives to large private enterprise companics powers which up to now, they could have got only by promoting a Private Bill at very great expense to themselves in time and money. Now, without any expense to themselves, either in time or money, they are to get all they could ever get from a Private Bill and a Private Act of Parliament. They are to get it all from this discredited Tory Government.
I have no doubt at all that a great many people outside will be looking on to see how the Government treat these great vital interests and that they will contrast that with the way in which the Government treat ordinary folk. I hope that every hon. Member in the House who has any regard at all for the decencies of debate and for the retention of the kind of democracy we have built in this country will see that all that is set aside by this Motion, and will accordingy vote against it.

4.6 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: We cannot all have the pleasure of serving on such an important Standing Committee as that dealing with the trunk Pipe-lines Bill, and I must say, in my limited Parliamentary experience, that I felt it was a grave omission that my right hon. Friend did not use his good influences to see that I was a member of the Standing Committee.

Mr. Ray Mawby: My hon. Friend can swop with me.

Mr. Nabarro: My hon. Friend says that I can swop with him, but it is a bit late in the day to make a suggestion of that kind.
For my part, I have habitually participated in fuel and power debates, and I would have enjoyed participating—had the deliberations been sensible—in the affairs of this Standing Committee upstairs.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: The hon. Member did not volunteer.

Mr. Nabarro: No, I did not volunteer, because the selection of Conservative Members to serve on Standing Committees is not based on volunteering. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The hon. Gentleman should endeavour to confine his activities to those matters affecting his own party machine, and not those of the Government party, which happily orders its affairs so very much more effectually than the Socialist Party manages its affairs.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) concluded his speech by referring to the Ministry of my right hon. Friends as being discredited. It is not discredited. It is certainly not discreditable to have brought in a Bill of this kind which is the logical successor in title to the corporation Bill introduced the Session before last and which a majority of my hon. Friends and I myself sitting on this side of the House felt involved too momentous issues to be dealt with by a private corporation Bill.
Many of my hon. Friends and I joined in asking the Minister of Power of the day to introduce Government legislation to deal with this very important and progressive matter of trunk pipelines—for carrying minerals, liquids, and even water as an alternative on certain occasions—as an important public matter, and one which was much too large, in view of the diversity of technological and economic problems associated with it, to be dealt with by a private corporation Bill.
When the present Bill was brought in as a Government Measure, first in another place and then sent here, many of us on this side—I, for one—recognised that not only fuel and power problems were involved, but that there were involved very important issues of town and country planning as well, and that it was certain to be a Bill which would involve heated controversy between the two major parties in the House on the simple proposition whether these trunk pipelines should be publicly owned or privately owned subject to important safeguards in the Bill.
I, and, I believe, the majority of my right hon. and hon. Friends on this side of the House, are still sternly, unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly opposed to any additional powers of public

ownership being set in statutes passed by this House.

Mr. Willis: Deal with the Motion.

Mr. Nabarro: I am dealing with the Motion.

Mr. Willis: As far as I have heard, the hon. Gentleman has not made reference to it at all yet.

Mr. Nabarro: If I am out of order, Mr. Speaker, I am sure that you will put me into good order at once. So far, I believe, I am perfectly in order.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House referred to the deeply controversial issue in the Bill and whether it should be regarded as an additional measure of nationalisation, or whether, as my hon. Friends and I feel, it should be a private enterprise Bill.
We at least are quite united. We are opposed to nationalisation root and branch. We do not propose to countenance any extension of it. On the other side of the House, however, there is no such unanimity. Those who study, as I do with avidity, Motions Which appear on the Order Paper, will have noted the one put down by the near-octogenarian right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) last week, calling for more nationalisation.

Mr. William Hamilton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Can you tell the House what a Motion on the Order Paper signed by over 60 hon. Members has to do with this Motion?

Mr. Speaker: I am wondering. The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) was entitled to develop his argument if it was coming to the Allocation of Time Motion. What he was saying was not quite in order, but I have not heard quite enough to be sure.

Mr. Nabarro: All these matters, as you know, Mr. Speaker, are progressive. I was referring to the deep cleavage of opinion on the issue of nationalisation. I said that this side of the House is quite unanimous in opposing further nationalisation root and branch. Members opposite are not unanimous on nationalisation.

Mr. Willis: Will the hon. Member give way?

Mr. Nabarro: If the hon. Member will allow me to finish my point, I will then give way. Meantime, perhaps he will stop yapping.
Members opposite are not unanimous about nationalisation. The right hon. Member for Easington is calling for more, leading off with the nationalisation of I.C.I.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The matter of order was raised with me. I have indicated to the hon. Gentleman that he must get back to the Motion, and he must now do so.

Mr. Nabarro: I will work my way there, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Willis: Has the hon. Gentleman forgotten that the very first Bill which this Government introduced extended the principle of public ownership to Highland shipping?

Mr. Nabarro: There is nothing in the Motion about Highland shipping and I cannot, therefore, refer to it. The point I am endeavouring to lead up to is this: we on this side are united in opposing nationalisation, but hon. Members opposite are split down the middle. They do not know whether they are for or against more nationalisation.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has so far repeated three times each of those propositions. Repetition does not represent getting back to the Motion. He must do that, or stop.

Mr. Nabarro: My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House drew attention to the large number of Amendments on the Notice Paper in the Standing Committee. The hon. Member for Hamilton referred to 140 Amendments now outstanding, of which approximately half have been put down by the Opposition. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Approaching one half. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Well, I have not added them up, and I do not intend to add them up, because they will not all be selected. Moreover many of them will be grouped and it is, therefore, wholly erroneous to suggest that a certain amount of time should be allocated to each Amendment now on the Order Paper.
The point I am endeavouring to make is that a substantial number of Amend-

ments are Opposition Amendments. They are largely in support of the principle and the concept of public ownership. It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power should reject, without any nonsense, all such Amendments and say that the Government side will not accept them.
The hon. Member for Hamilton accused my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power of gross discourtesy. I have listened to many deliberations in this Committee, although I have not myself been a member, and I have not witnessed or heard any gross discourtesy by my right hon. Friend throughout the very lengthy sittings.
Further, the hon. Gentleman has said that the available time under this timetable Motion amounts to 700 minutes in which to debate 140 Amendments, assuming that each takes five minutes. But, of course, that is nonsense. To start with, 140 Amendments will not be called.

Mr. Willis: How does the hon. Member know?

Mr. Nabarro: Because it would be absolutely impossible, as the hon. Member well knows.
Never, in any Standing Committee or on the Floor of the House, has every Amendment on the Notice Paper been selected. Of course they will not all be selected in this case. In any event, the hon. Member for Hamilton, complaining that the time allocated was too short, suggested that the Committee would only sit tomorrow, Tuesday, 10th July, Thursday, 12th July and Tuesday, 17th July—the three normal days.
But the Committee does not sit only on normal days. There is nothing to prevent him, if he wants additional time, from putting forward, when the Committee resumes its deliberations, a suggestion that it should sit on Tuesday, 10th July, Wednesday, 11th July, Thursday, 12th July, Friday the 13th July, and so on, to debate his allegedly important Amendments. But I suspect that he does not legitimately want more time. What he really seeks is an extension of time, generally, in order to wreck my right hon. Friend's timetable so that he will not be able to secure his Bill


by the end of this Session. That is why I oppose him.
Hon. Members opposite have had abundant time to make all relevant, reasonable and logical points on this Bill. I took a party of visitors to the Committee one night at 12.30 a.m. to listen to what was going on. We sat and listened from the Strangers' section of the Standing Committee room for 25 minutes.

Mr. Loughlin: Fifteen minutes.

Mr. Nabarro: I sat there for 25 minutes. I did not see the hon. Member with a stop watch. I do not suppose that he has one.

Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member is pursuing his usual policy of gross exaggeration. He came once to the Standing Committee. He was there for 15 minutes, and now he presumes to tell us what has gone on in the sittings of the Standing Committee.

Mr. Nabarro: That seems to me to be rather an irrelevant intervention. I have paid several visits to the Committee to see what has been going on. I regard it as the most flagrant example of frivolous filibustering by a group of hon. Members opposite, that I have listened to in my modest twelve years in Parliament. On one occasion, there was the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper). I listened to him. He was addressing himself to a Motion that the Committee should adjourn. That Motion had then been before the Committee for an hour. The hon. Member for Pontefract is a good humorist.

Mr. Willis: More than the hon. Gentleman is.

Mr. Nabarro: Perhaps so.

Mr. Wilfred Proudfoot: He is not as good as you are, Gerald.

Mr. Nabarro: My hon. Friend the Member for Cleveland (Mr. Proudfoot) says, "Not as good as you are, Gerald", but standards of humour vary.
The hon. Member for Pontefract was pawky but irrelevant and successfully wasted the time of the Committee for more than 20 minutes. He was then

followed by two or three of his hon. Friends, who went on for a couple of hours. If the hon. Member for Hamilton had really wished to make good progress, the whole of that time could have been devoted to a proper discussion and to many important Amendments.
Far from my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power being discourteous, on that occasion I marvelled at his consummate patience. As I left the Committee that evening, I said to the three ladies and one gentleman who were my guests, two of them American visitors, "Thank God I am not a Minister; I could not stand this appalling waste of time in the name of so-called Parliamentary democracy."
I wish that my right hon. Friends the triumvirate now seated on the Treasury Bench, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power and my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, had exercised their customary and collective prescience when the Bill arrived in this House and had introduced a time-table Motion at the outset. It would have saved a lot of our time and shattered nerves, and by now the Bill would have been on the Statute Book.
We are the majority in the House of Commons.

Mr. Willis: Not for long.

Mr. Nabarro: I expect to be a member of the majority two years hence, after the next General Election, far from being a member of the discredited party referred to by the hon. Member for Hamilton.
This is a Conservative Measure. The principles in the Bill enunciate the principles of private enterprise as opposed to State ownership. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Socialist Amendments seeking to impinge on or to destroy those principles have been so roundly rejected by my right hon. Friend. I hope that this timetable Motion will be passed, as deservedly it should, by a large majority.

4.22 p.m.

Mr. William Warbey: The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) occasionally earns the respect of the House when he speaks on some matters with which he has a slight acquaintance. When he speaks on those


with which he has none, he adds to our entertainment but not to our enlightenment. He could hardly have made the speech which he has just made if he had made any study of the Amendments in the Standing, Committee. For example, he would have known that none of the Amendments remaining has anything to do with the contest between public and private enterprise.
Because the hon. Member is now leaving the Chamber and has no further interest in the proceedings of the House, having said what he had to say, he will now never know that he was quite mistaken when he suggested that the proceedings on a Motion for the adjournment of the debate were unduly prolonged by hon. Members on this side of the Committee. They were prolonged because the Minister had taken his usual arrogant attitude towards proposals made by Opposition Members and had refused to give any indication of his intentions that night, merely making a few flippant remarks about progress which the Committee made during the hours of darkness and indicating, for the second time during the proceedings in Committee, that he hoped that the Committee would sit all night. As a matter of fact, he had to pack up at half-past three in the morning on that occasion because his hon. Friends were beginning to revolt.
There are two points on which I agree with the Leader of the House: first, that the Bill is important; and, secondly, that it was introduced too late in the Session. The mistake which the Government have made throughout their handling of the Bill has been to underestimate its importance. Instead of treating it as a Bill of major importance, from the beginning they have treated it as though it were purely a minor matter concerned simply with putting on the Statute Book a procedure to enable certain vested interests to obtain licences to print money, as they did with the Television Act.
Because that was their attitude, the Government introduced the Bill nearly half way through the Session instead of at the beginning. If they were in a hurry, they could have introduced it early in the Session. They have had plenty of time to draft it, for it is nearly two years since the Minister of Power

said that it was necessary to have general legislation to deal with this subject. What has he been doing all that time? Why was it so long before we could even see a draft of this extremely important Measure?
Why was the Bill introduced first in another place? The Minister has admitted that it raises matters of the highest controversy, the fundamental issues of public and private ownership. Such Bills, traditionally now, are taken first in this House and not in another place. If this had been, we would have saved further time, because to some extent we are now having to duplicate work which was done in Committee in another place. Even in another place the Bill did not have the progress which the Leader of the House assigned to it. The Government originally intended that proceedings on the Bill in another place should be completed by 3rd April, but, in fact, they were not completed until 1st May, four weeks later, so that there was a further four weeks' delay.
The Leader of the House then calmly told us that we could go off for two and a half weeks for the Whitsun Recess and that the Government's programme was in such good shape that there was no hurry and that we could have an extra week to look after our constituencies. But as soon as we came back, we were told that we had to rush on and at all costs get the Bill through before the end of the Session.
The Bill is now less than one quarter of the way to completion, if we are properly to consider it, and its proper consideration is a matter to which we attach a great deal of importance. We want a Bill for the orderly development of pipelines. We have always wanted such a Bill, because we realise that this will be an extremely important form of transport, which is why we would have been anxious to facilitates the passage of a good Bill. The trouble was that we got thrown at us not a good Bill, but an extremely bad Bill, a Bill which not only took the doctrinaire attitude of the Tory Party on the subject of public or private ownership—which we rather expected from hon. Members opposite—but which completely failed to carry out the undertakings given by the Minister himself when the House discussed previous Private Bills.
We were bound to have a long discussion on the fundamental issue of public or private ownership, but the Minister knows that most of the time in Committee and this will apply to future discussions—was concerned not mainly with the issue of public or private ownership, but with whether the Bill was in such a form as to give effect to the undertakings given by the Minister himself when he foreshadowed this Bill more than twelve months ago.
When, in April of last year, the Minister spoke about the the type of Bill that he was contemplating introducing, he said that there would have to be general legislation to lay down the procedure for applications for a licence to establish pipelines. Such applications would be considered at a public inquiry. Following on the public inquiry there would be a Ministerial Order, and that Order would then come before Parliament so that Parliament could in the last resort decide whether it should be confirmed, and whether by the making of such an Order the Minister had complied with his expressed intention of ensuring that the development of pipelines should proceed in an orderly manner.
When the Minister first talked about introducing a Bill dealing with pipelines, we thought that the public interest was to be the paramount consideration. We understood that the rights of objectors would be properly safeguarded. We understood that attempts were to be made to secure a balance between a threefold interest in this type of development: general public interest; the private interests of landowners and others affected by the construction of pipelines; and, in the last resort, the interests of the prospective users of the pipelines.
None of those things is provided for in the Bill. When we first saw the Bill, we realised that it was a complete abortion as regards the proper and orderly development of pipelines. The whole purpose of the Opposition in tabling Amendments and in seeking adequate discussion of them has been to ensure that the Minister's undertakings were carried out, because he failed to carry them out himself.
I admit that the Minister courteously explained that he had not been able to carry out the undertakings that he had

thought it reasonable to give a year before. He admitted that he had changed his mind because of the pressure of what he described as interests both inside and outside his Department. But as a result of the pressures of those interests—and they certainly include the great oil companies to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) referred—we were presented with a Bill which, if it was to accomplish the job it was intended to do, would have to be radically transformed in Committee.
What did we get from the Minister? We got no concessions from him to any of the proposals we put forward to improve the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House said that hon. Members on this side recapitulated their arguments in Committee. There was a reason for doing so. We did it because only by so doing could we extract any kind of a reply from the Minister. Time and again we tabled important Amendments to which we got a brief reply lasting five minutes or so from the Minister or his hon. Friend.

Mr. Loughlin: A reply lasting five minutes would have been a long one.

Mr. Warbey: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
As a result of these brief replies, we pressed for proper replies. We put forward further arguments in support of our Amendments, but all that happened was that the Minister sat dumb, as did his supporters behind him. They apparently had nothing to say on this extremely important Measure. It was only after we had put our points to the Minister, once, twice, and sometimes three times, that eventually we received a reasonable reply from him; not, except on the rarest occasions, any concessions to our point of view, but at least some explanation of the Government's point of view, which we could never get until the matter had been argued at great length.
None of us wanted to take as long as we have done to discuss the Bill. We would have been glad to have made faster progress, but we were doing our duty to the Committee, to the House, and to the country in fighting a proper battle to improve the Bill. We have been prevented from doing our work in Committee, and now the Leader of the


House proposes to cut down the time to a ridiculous fraction of what would be reasonable to discuss the remainder of the Bill. The Government will get their Bill, but it will be a bad one because it has been mishandled all the way through.
The Bill is misbegotten, and now it is to be rushed through and placed on to the Statute Book. The only purpose it will serve in the end is to give a licence to those private interests—the big oil companies—who are waiting for the opportunity to apply for the great concessions which tie Minister proposes to hand out.

4.38 p.m.

Mr. Ray Mawby: I almost felt sorry for the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) when he talked about the great difficulty that he had had in Committee of doing this great service for the nation. During the many hours when I was in the Committee I felt that the hon. Gentleman's attitude was due to a different reason from that stated by him.
I do not want to be ungenerous, but I got the impression that hon. Gentlemen opposite were not particularly interested in seeing the Bill go through anyway. Far from the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that my right hon. Friend had adopted an arrogant attitude to hon. Gentlemen opposite, I felt that all the way through my right hon. Friend had been as accommodating as one could expect a Minister to be when in charge of a complicated Bill of this kind.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us of any concession made by the Minister?

Mr. Mawby: The hon. and learned Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) spent so little time in the Committee that he probably does not know the number of occasions on which my right hon. Friend was very accommodating, particularly when dealing with the question of compulsory acquisition, about which the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) and several hon. Members on both sides of the Committee were concerned.
Although he did not say that he would alter the Bill or accept an Amendment, my right hon. Friend said that this was a problem that he would be prepared to

reconsider. My right hon. Friend was not arrogant, and was not adopting a stonewalling attitude. He was seized of the fact that many hon. Members were concerned about the question of compulsory acquisition.

Mr. Warbey: Now will the hon. Member tell the House how many Opposition Amendments have been accepted by the Minister, or in how many cases the Minister has given art undertaking that he will introduce an appropriate Amendment on Report?

Mr. Mawby: We have spent so many hours discussing the Bill that my memory is not as good as all that. If my right hon. Friend did not accept the one referring to compulsory acquisition we must assume that there were some very good reasons for it.

Mr. T. Fraser: Does not the hon. Member recall that the Amendment that he has mentioned, about compulsory acquisition—when his right hon. Friend agreed to reconsider the matter—was one which was moved from the Government benches? It was not an Opposition Amendment.

Mr. Mawby: I am sorry, but the hon. Member for Ashfield, in his intervention, asked me to state how many Opposition Amendments had been accepted by my right hon. Friend, and I said that my memory was not good enough to enable me to give him the exact number. He did not ask what had happened to the Amendments moved by my hon. Friends.

Mr. T. Fraser: I am sorry, but the hon. Member is misunderstanding me. He gave one example of the Minister's being reasonable. I was pointing out that the Minister was then being reasonable in dealing with an Amendment moved by one of his own supporters. My hon. Friend asked a question and the hon. Member said that he could not answer it, and he was going to move on from that. I just wanted to point out to him that there was nothing in the point that he made.

Mr. Mawby: This may be a matter of opinion. Hon. Members opposite have said that my right hon. Friend made very short replies. They seemed short, but only because of the extremely long speeches made by the Opposition. The attitude which my right hon. Friend


adopted on the Bill is a matter of opinion.
It is important for us to realise that it was clear that there would be a head-on clash when the Bill was debated, either here or in Committee upstairs. This was to be expected, because the Bill involves the question in respect of which a great dispute has been going on between the two major parties for many years. A collision of interests was quite natural. The important point about the timetable Motion is that we should make sure that the Bill has an opportunity of becoming law during this Session.
The main reason for that is that the Select Committee which considered the Esso Petroleum Company Bill—the Committee of which I was a member —reported to the House that it was concerned that arrangements such as those contained in the Esso Bill should no longer be covered by private legislation, but should be made subject to public legislation, properly designed to bring about more co-ordination in the pipeline structure of the country.
Since this was a suggestion of the Select Committee the House and the Minister had a responsibility to see that public legislation was enacted at the earliest possible moment. I notice that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House pointed out that if this Bill had not been in the process of being discussed at present attempts might have been made by promoters to introduce further Private Bills. Most hon. Members believe that it is time that this matter was dealt with other than by private legislation, and although it is unlikely that any hon. Member, on whichever side of the House he sits, is completely satisfied with the provisions of the Bill, the Committee upstairs has been trying to resolve various points.
The hon. Member for Hamilton, naturally, had to make loud noises of righteous indignation when he spoke this afternoon, but he must have heaved a sigh of relief at the thought that he would no longer have to find various groups of words to keep the Committee going long enough to make certain that we would sit forever, or until the Bill was killed by kindness. That was the attitude adopted by the Opposition in Committee.
The hon. Member for Hamilton said that once we had reached the end of the contentious Clauses we would be able to go merrily along, making use of our combined experience and so ending with a better Bill. We have gone through what I thought were the contentious parts of the Bill, during which long speeches have been made and many red herrings have been drawn across the trail. We have had many long arguments about the interpretation of the word "pipeline", although the Interpretation Clause is as clear as anyone could expect. On almost every Amendment that has been moved there has been this harking back to the definition of the word "pipeline".
Time after time, in answer to all the points that have been raised, the Minister has been forthcoming in his replies. Hon. Members opposite may say that my right hon. Friend has not given any answers; all I would say is that there is none so deaf as he Who will not listen. If hon. Members opposite do not want the answers that my hon. Friend has given they will continue to say that he has not given the right answers. The Minister has all the experience of his Department behind him, and is advised as to the points that ought to be changed in the Bill. The Minister has handled the Bill very well.
It is quite clear that from our progress so far we should not be able to finish the Bill during this Session without a time-table Motion. That being so, it is right and proper, to prevent future private legislation to deal with pipelines, that we should support the Motion for the allocation of time and that afterwards the Committee should seriously examine the Bill. Once the Committee does that, and stops having fun, it can settle down and make certain that when the Bill leaves the Committee it will be a better one than it was previously.

4.49 p.m.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: I want to refer to two points made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) which might be slightly pertinent to the discussion. First, I want to deal with the question of the Minister's ability to accept Amendments of any kind, whether moved by members of the Opposition or


by Government supporters. The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr), who is by no means a supporter of the House——

Mr. T. Fraser: —who is by no means a supporter of this side of the House.

Mr. Loughlin: Yes, I am sorry. I meant to say that the hon. Member was by no means a supporter of this side of the House.
The hon. Gentleman submitted his Amendment, and in reply, the Minister said that he was 90 per cent. in sympathy with its terms; he had every sympathy with the principle behind it and felt that he might have the powers which the acceptance of the Amendment would have accorded to him. But at the end of the discussion the Minister suggested that his hon. Friend should withdraw the Amendment. I had pleaded with the Minister to say that he was prepared, even though he could not accept the terms of the Amendment, to undertake to accept the principle and provide a suitable Government Amendment on Report.
The Minister refused to make an adequate comment on the plea which was made to him. But, an hour-and-a-half later, after practically every hon. Member had put the same point to him and tried to persuade him that it was the right thing to do, the Minister agreed that he would look at the Amendment again and see what could be done on Report. As has been said by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), there has been filibustering, but it was on the part of the Minister—there is more than one way to delay the proceedings of a Committee.
Not all the long speeches have been made by hon. Members from this side of the House who sat on that Standing Committee. We were treated to a speech from the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) which lasted for 25 minutes and related to a very simple Amendment. If the Minister cannot control the length of the speeches of his own supporters he cannot complain if some hon. Members on this side make speeches in Committee lasting about 10 minutes——

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet: Ten minutes!

Mr. Loughlin: I said "10 minutes" deliberately, because I knew that that would provoke the hon. Member for Willesden, East.

Mr. Skeet: The hon. Member will appreciate——

Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Member has made as many speeches in the Standing Committee as anyone else. I say this in answer to the suggestion that hon. Members on this side who were members of that Committee made all the speeches.
I am not criticising hon. Members opposite for making speeches. If anyone can tell me what we are supposed to do in a Standing Committee except examine the Bill which is before the Committee, and make speeches in support of Amendments or new Clauses which are introduced, I should like to hear. That is the job of hon. Members on this side of the House and of Government supporters. The reiteration of what has happened in the past is a sheer waste of time.
This is an important matter to the House of Commons and no one recognises that more than the Leader of the House. The imposition of a Guillotine is something which has become a habit of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that it was becoming a habit. He referred to the number of times during this Session when the Government have had to have recourse to guillotine Motions in order to secure their own way. I hope that I may have the attention of the right hon. Gentleman when I say that today we are creating another precedent.
Is it a new precedent, that we should devote only a period of two-and-a-half hours to discussing a guillotine Motion? Should not this Motion have been discussed at least for a full day? Have we now reached the point when not only do we accept the principle of guillotine Motions on major legislation, but are not prepared to devote sufficient time to discussing such Motions?
I do not care whether or not arrangements far this Motion were made between the two sides of the House. I do not know whether the Motion has been moved as a result of consultations, but I think that we should register a strong protest at the abuse of the procedures of the House if back-bench Members


have been denied the opportunity to discuss an issue of great importance.

Mr. Mawby: Perhaps I may help the hon. Gentleman. If he will look at the Order Paper he will see that although Private Business has been set down to be discussed at seven o'clock the debate on this Motion may be continued afterwards.

Mr. Loughlin: I am grateful——

Sir Douglas Glover: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Is not the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) casting a reflection on the Chair, as Private Business is set down by Order of the Chairman of Ways and Means and has nothing to do with the Government as such?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I did not take it as a criticism of the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Mr. Loughlin: I am very grateful for your generosity, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I can assure you that I had no thought of attempting to bring discredit on the Chair.
When I said that the debate on this Motion finished at seven o'clock, or rather, when I asked the question—I did not say that it finished—I assumed that that had been determined by the Leader of the House and submitted to the House last Thursday during the announcement of business. If it be true that we can return to the discussion on this Motion after Private Business, that is all right, and I am very glad. But I hope that there will be a sufficient number of hon. Members prepared to continue the debate until this matter has been aired as fully as possible.
I consider this issue to be important. I know that some hon. Members seem to look upon it as a huge joke. They cannot attach sufficient importance to the Parliamentary democracy for which we fought for so long. It is most important to any hon. Member that our Parliamentary democracy should continue, and if any Leader of the House, whether he be from the Conservative Party or the Socialist Party, denies their rights to back-bench Members of Parliament, it is incumbent upon them to protest.
Even though this debate be continued after the Private Business has been disposed of, I still consider that it is an abuse of the procedures of this House on the part of the Government to introduce such a Motion as this in relation to major legislation, The Leader of the House can talk to me about past "crimes" committed by other Governments until he is blue in the face. It will not make the slightest difference to the arguments which I wish to advance —does my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) wish to intervene?

Mr. Willis: I merely wish to say to my hon. Friend that the Measure to which the Leader of the House referred, the Gas Act, was not guillotined by a Labour Government.

Mr. Loughlin: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I think there was a further reference to iron and steel, which, perhaps, was what the Leader of the House meant.
Even assuming that it might be necessary at some time for the Government to introduce a guillotine Motion on major legislation of this kind, we have to ask ourselves: is this the appropriate time? Here we have a Bill which is recognised on both sides of the House as being of major importance. Even ignoring the political differences, and ignoring the issue of whether the pipelines should be under social ownership or private enterprise, we are dealing with a Bill which will set the pattern for our future distributive for transport services.
The implications of this Measure are such that it has been difficult to know how to designate them. That was one of the difficulties we had in the Committee. The Minister of Power, who has been piloting the Bill through Committee, and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, have had this difficulty just as much as we had. We do not yet know the full implications of the pipeline transport system. We have disposed of 10 Clauses of the Bill.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I said eleven.

Mr. Loughlin: I accept the correction. I must have slept on the last one.

Mr. Macleod: What about the others?

Mr. Loughlin: I do not think that the Minister would attempt to charge me with having taken up a great deal of time during the Committee sittings. With one exception, all my speeches have been very brief, five or seven or eight minutes. I have attempted at all times to make them as concise as possible. We have disposed of 11 Clauses and we have 100-plus Amendments to consider, 60-plus in the name of the Government. There are six Schedules and a whole host of new Clauses.
This is the question the Leader of the House has to answer. Does he consider it possible for the Standing Committee to give due consideration to all the Amendments, the new Clauses and Schedules which are likely to be called? That is the issue with which the House is dealing. I understand that we have only until a week on Wednesday before the Bill is reported. We have tomorrow and Wednesday and the following Tuesday before we submit our deliberations to this House.
That would be three sittings of the Committee, but the Minister has a new idea. He gets two sittings in one day as often as possible. That is another abuse of the House. Hon. Members are not supposed to spend the whole of their time in Standing Committee. Ministers have an idea that they can abuse the time of Members of Parliament, particularly that of full-time Members, without whom Standing Committees could not be manned. There will come a day when full-time Members will say to Ministers, "You had better man your own Committee. We cannot be expected to spend the greater proportion of our time in Committee. We are sent here by constituents to look after our constituencies."
The question is, within the time allotted under the guillotine Motion, can we possibly give due consideration to the proposals before the Committee? If the Leader of the House cannot answer that question in the affirmative, if he cannot give that assurance to hon. Members and the country when Members of Parliament are dealing with major legislation on an issue the full implications of which they do not know, he is neglecting his duty. He knows as well as we do that under the timetable

Motion we could not give adequate consideration to even 50 per cent. of the Government Amendments.
This is the negation of parliamentary democracy. The only difference between parliamentary democracy and totalitarianism is that the Government in a totalitarian State say, "This is the decree we are enacting," whereas in a Parliamentary democracy the Government have to allow the floodlight of publicity to play upon their activities. If by virtue of this guillotine Motion we are unable to have the floodlight of discussion put on to Amendments submitted by the Government there is no difference between that procedure and the procedure of totalitarian countries. It is the job of the Leader of the House to see to it that there is complete defence of our Parliamentary democracy. Unless he does that he will be guilty of gross neglect of his duty.
If I were to give advice to my own side in considering this proposal, this is the advice I would give to my Front Bench and my hon. Friends. I should withdraw from the Committee and say, "We are not prepared to attempt to discuss the Bill under these conditions." I would serve notice on the interests the Government seek to serve that after the next General Election we would revoke this legislation.

5.7 p.m.

Dr. Horace King: I am sure that hon. Members all share the uneasiness expressed in the very sincere speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin). I thought that it would be appropriate if some hon. Members who did not take part in the Committee took part in what, after all, is a very important discussion.
I want, first, to refer to the lighthearted speech of the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), who, after making his speech, has left the Chamber. He ought to have stayed to hear some of the debate. He charged my hon. Friends in Committee with "most frivolous filibustering". That is about as inaccurate as the description he gave of his own time in Parliament as a "modest twelve years".
The Gas Bill was not guillotined. Compared with the Gas Bill Committee,


the Committee about which we are debating today has been a model of co-operation and good conduct. I would say this to the hon. Member for Kidderminster if he were here. At any rate, the House would be unanimous in agreeing with him when he thanked God that he is not a Minister.
This is not only a very controversial Bill in which the battle between private and public enterprise is being waged. It is also a very important Bill, because it raises all kinds of new issues of tremendous significance. They need time to be discussed. I suggest to the Leader of the House that it is an over-simplification to regard what has taken place in Committee as being merely the usual clash of the parties between private and public enterprise. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey), who played a very active part in the Committee, has given some examples of some of the issues outwith the major cleavage of opinion between the two parties.
The Committee has, for instance, been engaged on considering the consequences, both from the point of view of public interest and of preserving the private interests of some citizens against the private interests of other citizens. Today, we are imposing a time limit on a free debate in Committee, and I believe that nobody likes doing that. My hon. Friend was right to evoke the spirit of Parliamentary democracy in a world where every basic assumption is challenged as never before in history. We do not lightly throw away even for one Bill, a single one of the privileges which men like Peter Wentworth died in the Tower of London to win for us.
On the other hand, no one is opposed to the Guillotine in principle. When we were the Government we had to use it, and we shall certainly use it when we get back to power. Let us be quite frank about that. I hope that the leaders of my party, when we return to power, will profit by some of the examples given by the present Government in the effective way of using the Guillotine. At the end of the last century we had to come to the conclusion, that, on occasion, free debate must be ourtailed.
The Leader of the House is perfectly right when he says that there are only two alternatives. Either the majority

governs or the minority governs, and it is unthinkable that a Government should concede to a minority the power of dictating action to the Government. But while the grim alternatives are majority or minority rule, in between the two extremes there is a field of good will and co-operation.
One does not use a sledge hammer with which to crack a nut, and one of the charges which we make against the Government is that they have been reckless in their use of the Guillotine. Compromise and understanding could have obviated the necessity for at least some of the guillotine Motions which have been introduced. It is right that the Government should have to pay with a day of precious Parliamentary time—the more precious at the end of a Session—as it is doing today. I echo the uneasiness of one who loves Parliament, that the Government have been lucky in sacrificing only half of their Parliamentary time today because the half a day on private Members' business would have come from the Government in any case. I hope that this is not a precedent.
Guillotine debates are changing. They used to be a game. The Government 'used to quote statements of spokesmen of the Opposition when they were the Government and the Opposition used to quote statements by Government speakers when they were in opposition. There has been none of that this afternoon, except for one use of it by the Leader of the House, who took one speech from the Opposition when they were in Government without telling us that when our Ministers made such statements on the need for the Guillotine the Government, then the Opposition, were thoroughly indignant and up in arms and talked about dictatorship, Cromwell, and all the rest of it.
As I have said, Guillotine debates are no longer a game. All the speeches made this afternoon, with, perhaps, the exception of that made by the hon. Member for Kidderminster, have been serious. The Leader of the House has asked us to put a timetable on the Bill. I must confess that as I listened to the right hon. Gentleman it seemed as if there were a timetable on his brief speech. It seemed as if he had guillotined his own speech. There was hardly


any argument in it at all. The right hon. Gentleman simply told us that it was all the fault of the Opposition, although he conceded that the Opposition had the right to oppose, that the Bill is a very important one and that the Government must have it by the end of the Session.
I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman why, if the Bill is so important and when it was mentioned in the Queen's Speech, it should arrive in the House so late in the Session. The right hon. Gentleman told us, as if we did not know it, that it was late, but he did not offer the House a single reason why the Bill should not have had its First Reading—important as it is, and the whole House knows that it is important, until May. The urgency of the present position is largely due to the fact that the Bill was so late in coming to the House.
I suggest that when the Leader of the House is asking the House to give him a timetable he ought not to rely mechanically on his party's majority. He ought at least to explain to his own side why so important a Bill should come to the House so late. The right hon. Gentleman hardly gave the House a single word about the timetable itself. He merely said that he thought that 18th July was a reasonably good day on which to finish the Committee stage of the Bill. He told us that that would give us 21 sittings. I remember presiding over a non-contentious Bill—I think that it was the Road Traffic Bill—which had 26 sittings. In that case, it was not a matter of time wasting; it was a complex Bill—like this one.
It is not sufficient for the right hon. Gentleman to say to the House that 21 days seem to him to be reasonable. He ought to be able to prove it, and he ought when he replies, if he is to reply, to deal with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) and address himself to the question and whether the Committee can reasonably consider in six sittings all the detailed matter that remains.
I have not read the whole of the debates of the Committee. I have read a number of them, however, and, in particular, the first one. The Bill got off to a bad start. At the first sitting the Minister in charge, for whom we have

all a profound personal regard—our criticism of him is political not personal—proposed the most unusual timetable with which any Committee has been presented at its first sitting. Had this happened after some days and had the Minister had reason to think that the Committee was being awkward, it might have been justifiable.
I blame the Government and the Minister for needlessly antagonising the Committee by presenting it with a timetable of meetings at its first sitting which called forth protests even from Government supporters. To begin a Committee stage in this way, knowing that hon. Members are human, was only to ask for trouble. This is partly the cause of the trouble. The Government are in difficulties. The Bill is important and time is needed, and hard to provide, for a real discussion of some of the complex issues that still remain, outside the major battle that exists between the two sides of the House.
The Government must face up to the simple fact that they are responsible for the delay. It was not the fault of the Opposition that the Bill came to the House so late in the Session. The Government are responsible for mishandling the Committee and we have not heard from the Leader of the House today any real justification for the kind of timetable that he proposes.
Having said what I have said about the right of the majority to govern, I do not believe that a Government have the right merely to depend on the strength of their vote in the Lobby when presenting their demand for a timetable for which their own mistakes are responsible. The Leader of the House must remember that he is not only a leading member of the Government, but is also Leader of the House, with some responsibility to the House itself.

5.20 p.m.

Sir Douglas Glover: I will not detain the House for more than a few minutes, but I was called to my feet by the speech of the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King). He started by saying that the Opposition had learned a great deal about guillotine Motions and that they would use them when they were in power, following what they had learned from this Government. He rightly went on to


point out that it was the job of the majority to govern and that the minority had not the right to govern.
It seems to me that the House could turn its attention to procedure in Committee. We have a debate on Second Reading on the principle of a Bill, and the time allowed for that is clearly laid down-6½ hours. At the end of that time, and in accordance with the procedure of the House, the Guillotine falls, the vote is taken and a decision is reached on the Bill. The Bill is then sent into Committee upstairs. Once it reaches there without a guillotine Motion, it appears to run with very little control.
This Bill—and I am glad to say that I am not a member of the Committee —has already had 60 or 70 hours of debate. It had six hours debate on the principle and in Committee it has had 60 or 70 hours of debate and has still reached only Clause 11.
The House would get a great deal more respect from the public and the Press, and our procedure would be more coherent, if the Committee on Procedure were to consider the question of a Business Committee, allocating voluntarily, after discussion, time for the consideration of a Bill upstairs in Committee. This would give our proceedings more coherence than they have at present.

Dr. King: I am sure that the hon. Member does not want to give the general public the wrong impression. Debate in Committee is not uncontrolled. Every Amendment must be in order; selection would reject any Amendment which was merely repetitious. The Government have the right at any time, if they think that the debate has lasted for an unfair length of time, to ask the Chairman for the Closure, and he can give them the Closure if the debate seems to him to have been ample. There are very many controls in Committee upstairs.

Sir D. Glover: I am sure that the hon. Member accepts that I realise that. I am not saying that it is a wild free-for-all. It is not. But there is not the same control as we have on the Floor of the House. It seems to me that in this modern day and age—and this applies to both sides of the House—we

should bring far more coherence into our Committee procedure if the matter were looked into by a Committee on Procedure at an early date.

5.23 p.m.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: The hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) has made the first genuine House of Commons speech on this subject today. In his few remarks he showed that he had the interests of the House at heart.
One of the great difficulties is that when there is opposition of the kind which has existed on this Bill upstairs, the tendency is for hon. Members opposite to regard it as frivolous and as all part of the Parliamentary game. I do not know whether I can make any impression on hon. Members opposite for sincerity, but that is an entirely wrong impression. I understand how it has come about, and I fully appreciate that in the course of proceedings upstairs my hon. Friends and I have taken rather longer over things than we might have done—that is quite possible—if the Minister had handled this matter in a human way.
The curious point is—especially curious for him, because, normally, he is a man of broad humanity—that some of us genuinely believe that he did not handle it in this way and that what he did was calculated to goad us, as human beings, to be somewhat more diligent than we would otherwise have been.
This is an extremely important Bill, whether we realised it or not when it was first before the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said, it is not only a question of public ownership against private ownership; it is a question of orderly development of something which we all want to happen, and a question of interference with private rights without, as some of us think, adequate safeguards. All these are immensely important matters with which surely the House should deal.
To some of us the Government's attitude has seemed, "Never mind if what we are doing leads to disorderly development and interference with private rights, or interference with the beauty and amenity of the countryside. Never mind if this has to be done all over again because we have not taken


the reasonable planning measures which we could have taken. Never mind if these things happen, provided only that our powerful and wealthy friends have what they want for their private profit." That is how it has seemed to us, and, naturally, feelings on this side of the House have been running strongly. Naturally, the Bill has given rise to great controversy.
But that is not the complaint. It is not that we do not want a Bill of this sort. We know that we must have a Bill of this sort. We know that pipelines have already arrived and that there will he even more in the future and we believe that they are a right and proper development. It is not even that we object to a timetable. I was most interested in what the hon. Member for Ormskirk said. Possibly we ought to consider whether almost automatically there should be an agreed time table for work upstairs. I do not know whether we should agree with it after we had gone into the suggestion, but it seems a very good suggestion which ought to be considered.
What has happened in Committee on the Bill? I submit that not a single Amendment proposed by my hon. Friends was not a serious Amendment. It is true that on several occasions, the discussion was rather longer than we should all have like it to be, but I submit that that was largely because the Minister in charge of the Bill—very much more than the Parliamentary Secretary who assisted him, and who tried every now and then to explain her view on the difficulties which we felt on these matters—did not explain the position to us but simply sat silent. I was not there all the time, but I was there a good deal of the time. He came down from Olympus, as I said in Committee, to say one or two words to us, generally in a rather deprecating and derogatory fashion, without discussing the nature of our opposition.
That is not the way in which he should have dealt with the Committee, or the way to get hon. Members to co-operate and to help with the work which was supposed to be going on in Committee. He tailed lamentably—and I am sorry to have to say this. I think that the blame for what has happened must rest largely upon his

shoulders. Upstairs in Committee the real functioning of Parliamentary government was sacrified because of his conduct. Now the House is asked to agree to this Motion. No one would suggest that the time to be allotted to, the Amendments still on the Notice Paper is adequate for proper discussion.
What we are concerned with is not whether, in this instance, there should be a timetable Motion, but whether this Motion allots adequate time. I shall not go into all this again. I shall not repeat everything, because my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) has done same very lucid arithmetic. He has shown that the timetable is unreasonable. This is just another instance of the way in which, perhaps because they are so busy, possibly because they are tired, right hon. Members opposite are undermining our Parliamentary system, which has been built up through centuries of tail and which so many of them as individuals, as well as most hon. Members on this side, want to see preserved and possibly made more effective than it has been in the past.

5.31 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis: The Leader of the House, in moving the Motion, based his case on two legs. The first was that we have taken an unreasonable amount of time on the first 11 Clauses, that we have, in fact, been filibustering. The second was that the Government have to get the Bill before the end of the Session.
The right hon. Gentleman's point about the unconscionable time that we have taken needs to be examined. It arose not so much from the fact that the Opposition have opposed the Bill to their utmost as from the Minister's conduct. Had the Opposition wanted to oppose the Bill to the utmost, I very much doubt whether we would have reached Clause 3.
I do not think that we have seen one purely drafting Amendment on the Notice Paper. The Bill lends itself to hundreds of drafting Amendments, but, apart from Amendments designed to effect some alteration in the administration, we have not tabled what can be described as drafting Amendments, although the Government have. Nor have the Opposition tabled a frivolous Amendment. Therefore, we have not


opposed the Bill to the utmost. The delays which have arisen have undoubtedly arisen as a result of the way in which the Bill has been handled.
The right hon. Gentleman admitted that the Bill has been introduced late in the Session. This is a very serious point. If the right hon. Gentleman agrees that the Bill is introduced very late in the Session, he gives us half our case.
The first thing that happened in Committee was that we were confronted with a sittings Motion enabling us to sit all night. The Minister should have known Committees well enough to know that that would cause controversy. It did. He was not even satisfied with suggesting a sitting lasting the ordinary 2½ hours.

Mr. Ede: That is an absolute invitation to obstruct.

Mr. Willis: That was the first thing which happened in Committee. We were faced with a Motion enabling the Committee to sit for 24 hours, not for 2½ hours. If the Minister expects hon. Members not to discuss that, it is about time he learned something about hon. Members and their reactions. Of course it lent itself to obstruction and great debate. It even caused a certain amount of discontent among his hon. Friends.
Having got over that hurdle, it took seven or eight sittings to impress upon the Minister that we expected a reply to some of our arguments and that when questions were asked seriously we expected answers. The Minister did not seem to realise this until about the tenth sitting. I think that it was about half way during the first all-night sitting before the right hon. Gentleman seemed to realise that when hon. Members asked questions—some of my hon. Friends were speaking on behalf of local authorities; one was speaking on behalf of the London County Council, which has very important matters to raise—they at least expected answers. We did not expect the Minister to agree with all our questions, but at least we expected replies. This led to a great deal of time wasting.
On the occasion when we sat practically all night for the second time one of my hon. Friends asked in three sentences whether the Minister could tell

us how long he expected us to sit or how far he expected to get with the Bill. We did not receive a proper reply. We merely got a lot of "guff" to the effect that the right hon. Gentleman found that we got on better during the night. We did not get a proper answer. We had a debate lasting one and a half hours for no reason, merely because the right hon. Gentleman could not do what is the common practice and common courtesy in the House of Commons. Night after night Ministers rise and say, "We should like to get Clause 12", or, "We think that we ought to carry on for another two hours". This happens over and over again. Or it is arranged behind the Chair. So we wasted one and a half to two hours. This might have been for the very reason the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. He thinks that he functions better during the hours of darkness. He told us so. Perhaps that accounts for the fact that we received no answer until we sat all night. The right hon. Gentleman may be very good at sitting all night, but some of us rather resent having to sit all night.
I could go on illustrating the way in which the Bill has been handled. The Opposition may have taken up a certain amount of time. When one sits all night time is apt to be wasted. This happens on the Floor of the House. It would be intolerable to sit all that time with-out having a few little excursions or humorous asides. If the Minister wants to read the best filibustering speech of the whole 60 hours the Committee sat, he should read the last speech which was made from the Government side. The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) spoke for 25 minutes and talked about nothing. He continually turned round to see how the time was progressing.
The Bill has been badly handled. We could have got much further with it if it had been handled properly in the first place. The Bill, although it has already gone through another place, where their Lordships spent a considerable time discussing it and where the Minister had an opportunity to amend it, still requires about 60 Amendments and nine new Clauses from the Minister. A Bill that was a good Bill would not require that amount of amendment.
I suggest, therefore, to the right hon. Gentleman that this is a bad Bill, quite


apart from the principles involved in it. It is a shocking piece of legislation, so much so that the Minister, the last time that we discussed it, had to come along with a great pile of Amendments. Day after day we were confronted with an ever-thickening Notice Paper, not as a result of the activities of the Opposition, but the activities of the Minister. When the right hon. Gentleman blames the Opposition he is very wide of the mark. We are now being asked to suffer because of the blundering incompetence of the Government. We are now being asked to do as much work in six sittings as would keep the Committee going for 20 sittings, and to do this because the Government say, "We must have the Bill".
The hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) was, I thought, rather modest in his description of what happened about the Amendment which the Minister said he would consider. It was only because the hon. Member came in and the Minister thought that one or two of his own party would support him that he said that he would look at the Amendment. There was no indication from him while the Opposition were speaking that he would consider it. The hon. Member for Totnes was the only Member to give an answer to our question. He gave the best answer given during the whole of the Committee proceedings. When we asked the Minister for a reply, he said, "My hon. Friend has replied to the question".
That was the only answer that we got. I do not think that we exactly agreed with it, but it was a first-class answer. Why the Minister could not have stated that view two hours before the hon. Member for Totnes got to his feet, I do not know. He had the same information, with a large staff of civil servants to help him, but he did not have the understanding of the Committee which would have enabled him to give that answer in order that he might be able to proceed with the Bill.
The hon. Member for Totnes summed it up when he said that we now have to answer the question whether it is more important that we should get the Bill than it is that we should discuss the Bill properly. That is what the hon. Gentleman, although he may not have said it in those words, implied. That is the question before us now. The hon.

Member for Totnes said that he thought that it was more important that we should get the Bill.

Mr. Mawby: I know that the hon. Member will not want to be unfair or to convey an unfair inference. What I suggested throughout the whole of my speech was that it looked as if the timetable Motion was being introduced to enable us to drop all the fun that we were having in spending a long time in discussing the Bill and get down to solid decisions on the Bill, which, I believe, we can do.

Mr. Willis: We shall see what the hon. Member said when we read HANSARD tomorrow.
I am quite certain that the hon. Member posed the question that it was more important now to get the Bill than to discuss it at length. The said Member said that, of course, it was more important that we should get the Bill. I cannot accept the doctrine—the most dangerous that I have heard—that it is more important that we should get the Bill than that we democratically in this House should try to get the best Bill that we can. Once we accept that argument, we are on the very dangerous slope which must ultimately lead to the disappearance of democratic methods altogether.
It was the argument of the right hon. Gentleman himself that it was important to get the Bill, in his words, "In six sittings". Surely the right hon. Gentleman does not suppose that a Notice Paper full of Amendments can be adequately discussed in six sittings. Some of the right hon. Gentleman's new Clauses, which have not been read a Second time and the principles of which have not been considered, are almost a page in length. Every day the Notice Paper is enlarged as a result of the activities of the Minister——

Mr. Frederick Lee: Is my hon. Friend aware that he has said something really prophetic? It is not a Notice Paper. It is an Order Book.

Mr. Willis: There is a new Clause to attach conditions to compulsory rights orders.

Mr. Skeet: I think that the hon. Gentleman should look at the first stage


of the Bill where there are a number of Amendments from hon. Members opposite. I have attended the Committee every day except the last sitting and I have heard long hours of argument poured oust to no purpose.

Mr. Willis: This is another novel doctrine, that the Opposition are not expected to put down Amendments. When we add up all the novel doctrines emanating from the Tory benches we shall get a pretty picture of what the Tory Party stands for.
There is a new Clause of two pages on the Notice Paper, "Power of the Minister to attach conditions to Compulsory Rights Orders". This concerns private companies in their dealings with private individuals. It is an important matter. I would have thought that the rights of private citizens were worth more than 10 minutes' discussion.
Does the Leader of the House think that we ought to deal with two pages of a Clause concerning the rights of private citizens as against the big oil companies and dispose of it in 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour? It takes an enormous time to understand that new Clause, and it is obvious that questions must be asked about it. Apart from that, the principle embodied in it is so important that I am certain that nobody would suggest that it should be lightly dismissed.
A number of these new Clauses are of a similar character, and we cannot do justice to the Bill in six sittings. Even if it did not become law by July, and had to wait for another nine months, that would not be as disastrous as the Minister has indicated—certainly not so disastrous that we should sacrifice all our democratic rights to avoid that happening. We are all prepared to sacrifice our rights of speech and criticism in trying to make a Bill a good Bill—a bad Bill can do a lot of damage to various people—and it would have been better to have spent more time in improving this Measure.
For those reasons, I hope that the House will reject the Motion, which really asks us to put a parliamentary garb of respectability over the actions of a few tin-pot dictators.

5.51 p.m.

Sir John Barlow: When I entered the House about two hours ago I had not the slightest idea that I should speak. However, it was so hot outside that I wondered where the coolest place in the House was. I decided, despite the subject of this debate, that I would take a chance, and listen to it. Having heard a great many similar debates previously, I must confess that I have not heard any new arguments put forward today.
I sat on most of the Committees that dealt with the various nationalisation Measures between 1945 and 1950. Those Bills sought to create fundamental changes in the country's life, but most of them were dealt with by their Committees in a reasonable time—[HON. MEMBERS: "The Gas Bill."] That was an exception, I agree. That Committee had an all-night sitting, and a time limit was subsequently put on the Bill.
My concern is that when the public read of our interminably long sittings they will begin to criticise our proceedings as a whole—

Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Gentleman must not be so hypocritical about this. The party opposite was guilty of forcing long sittings during 1950 and 1951. Then, when it came to power, it changed the rules so that the same procedures could not again be adopted.

Sir J. Barlow: The hon. Member was not here in 1950, nor was I, though I was a Member from 1945 to 1950, and had very considerable experience of Committee work during those years.
If any Opposition—or, in certain cases, the Government, though I do not think that to be the case here—create the necessity for these timetables, our methods of procedure in Committee will be criticised outside. We have to get through such an enormous amount of work nowadays that we do not appear to have time to do it reasonably, and if that is the case we must change our rules. If we had to take up so much time on the Floor of the House, life would be unbearable. Why do some Bills take so much longer to deal with in Committee than they do on the Floor of the House? I urge the Government to think of that—and the Opposition, too, because they will be caught up in it later.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) accused the Minister of being provocative. I have had the pleasure of knowing my right hon. Friend for many years and, while I could say many things about him, I could not accuse him, of all people, of being provocative. I regard our present Committee procedure as unsatisfactory in some cases, and I must say it would be for the benefit of the good name of the House if some changes were made.
I cannot imagine any business succeeding if it were run on the same lines as some of our Committees. We criticise business a great deal, but as firms have to get through their business they organise things in such a way that they get the fundamental decisions worked out in a way that is not done in our Standing Committees. I hope that we shall deal with these matters, because they are of equal importance to both sides, according to where they are sitting.

5.56 p.m.

Mr. Joseph Harper: I wish that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) had stayed in his place, because I want to take up two of his remarks that were entirely without foundation. First, he said that when I spoke in the Committee in support of a Motion to adjourn our proceedings, I spoke for twenty minutes. That is false, because I have never spoken on any occasion for more than ten minutes. Secondly, he said that that speech was full of irrelevancies. In his usual circus manner, the hon. Member put it over to the House very nicely, and then took his unhurried departure. I am told that that is his usual way.
The Leader of the House has said that we on this side do not want to see a Pipelines Bill. That is entirely wrong. We do not want this Pipe-lines Bill but we do want a Pipe-lines Bill, because we recognise that this facet of transport is already very important and will become more important in the future. We firmly believe that that Bill should set out quite clearly that this side of our transport system is to be publicly owned. As has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser), very great powers are given by the Bill to private companies, and

those powers rightly belong to public utilities.
When I accepted nomination to the Standing Committee, I thought that I would really see democracy in action. I had not been on it for very long before I was sadly disillusioned. Apart from one Amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot)—an Amendment to which the Minister himself later attached his name—no other Opposition Amendment has been accepted. On one occasion the Committee sat until 8.35 a.m., which prompted one Yorkshire newspaper to say that the freshest man in the Committee was the Minister himself. It even described the red carnation he had in his buttonhole. I realise that the Minister is not wearing the same carnation as the one he wore on that occasion, which really was a nice one. In any case, why should the right hon. Gentleman not appear to be fresh? He did nothing. He just sat there and did not even listen to the arguments. There is an old saying, "In one ear and out the other." That could be applied to the Minister.
To be honest, I wondered on occasions whether the right hon. Gentleman was actually alive, but I happened to see him move occasionally. Do the Government consider that to be democracy at work? The Opposition tabled some Amendments which could have been accepted—and I am not referring to those connected with nationalisation—and which, if accepted, would have improved the Bill. Our aim has been to improve the wording of the Measure because it really is badly worded. Try, try and try again was all we could do, but our efforts were of no avail.
It would be as well for the right hon. Gentleman to remember that instead of having the usual two Standing Committee sittings per week he proposed, virtually at the outset of our proceedings, that there should be two meetings on Tuesdays and another on Thursdays. One hon. Member of the Standing Committee, When the Motion to sit more than twice a week was introduced, asked why the Committee should not also meet on Wednesdays and Fridays. I am wondering, if the Government wish to be as silly as they seem, why they are not proposing to sit on Saturdays and


Sundays as well and so get the Bill through all the more quickly. The Government know that they have "dropped a clanger", have brought the Bill forward too late in the Session and are, therefore, trying to rush it through.
A long list of Government Amendments and Clauses have yet to be discussed and if they are accepted, as I am sure they will be by the force of strength in the Divisional Lobbies, what will be involved? All the remaining work, including the passing of about 50 new Clauses and seven or eight Schedules, will have to be done in about three sittings. I am keeping my fingers crossed as to the length of those sittings. The only point on Which the Minister has given way in Standing Committee is that he allowed us to go home at 3.30 one morning instead of about 9 o'clock, as on a previous occasion. Anyway, on the occasion we left earlier he did not do it out of any consideration for Members on this side of the House but could see that his own supporters were wilting and had to send them home.
If the Motion under discussion is allowed to go through I am afraid that it will show the country that what we call our democracy is really a farce. So much business in Standing Committee will need to be transacted, especially in view of the number of Government Amendments and new Clauses, that it will be a question of an hon. Member popping up like a marionette to move one of them, another seconding, a call for a vote, a Division and passing on to the next one. If that is the way a Bill of this magnitude is to be taken through the House of Commons it is about time that our whole procedure was altered. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) advised the Opposition Front Bench—not that they are in need of advice on this issue—they should advise the Government to withdraw the Motion and bring in the Bill again at the beginning of the next Session.

6.5 p.m.

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: When the Leader of the House introduced the Motion earlier he began his speech by making a short quotation from a leader article in The Times. The

right hon. Gentleman took great care to tell us little about that article which appeared on Saturday. I thought that "The Robespierre of Debate" was a rather nice headline for The Times. It showed a close knowledge of revolutionary events and gave the Leader of the House a new title which we might well remember.
The Times based its headline on the fact that the Leader of the House has been responsible for guillotining five Bills, a great number, particularly
…in a fairly calm and not particularly congested Session
as The Times pointed out. It has certainly not been a Session in which there has been a great deal of new social reform legislation or legislation of tremendous importance that would greatly improve the well-being of the citizen. The Leader of the House, naturally, was not in a position to argue on these grounds, and, in fact, there was no mention at all in his speech of the sequence of events and the timing which led up to the introduction of the Bill.
I would like to add to the quotation made by the right hon. Gentleman and go on to what I would call the crux of the debate. After all, an attempt has been made by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), the Minister and other hon. Gentlemen opposite to try to evade the real issue. They have all been saying that because the Bill includes the basic disagreement between the two sides—public and private ownership—the Opposition has decided to obstruct the Bill. That is all there is to it, as far as they are concerned—and the Government, in the interests of the majority, must defend themselves and introduce the Guillotine. That is their argument, but I suggest that it is far from the truth.
The hon. Member for Kidderminster said that my hon. Friends and I were terribly divided on the public ownership aspect of the matter. He was able to say that only because he has not been an hon. Member of the Standing Committee. Had he been one he would have known that the Opposition is completely unanimous in its attitude towards the Bill. Certainly we should like to see, at the growing points of industry, its future decided by public ownership, especially an important new means of


transport. We at least wish to see this new industry publicly protected. But that was only one of the principal issues. The Times leader stated:
There are also other aspects of the Bill which demand the most careful draftsmanship and over which, experience has shown, legislators can easily go wrong: powers of compulsory purchase, requiring in this case specially careful scrutiny since they are being given to private undertakings; procedures for the hearing of objections and for public inquiries, a sensitive area of legislation which is widely thought to be capable of improvement; safety precautions; the interests of local authorities, who can be relied upon to cause plenty to be said on heir behalf during the passage of legislation affecting them.
All these issues found no place in the speech of the Leader of the House. He, whose primary responsibility it is to see that the working of the House goes on along democratic and Parliamentary lines, completely ignored that part of the article from which he quoted.
If the evidence is inquired into and investigated—and time does not permit us to do that now—it will be seen that by far the greater part of the time spent in Standing Committee was concerned with those five major issues which I have quoted from The Times. It is not usual for The Times to turn on the Government on matters of this kind, but its doing so proves conclusively that on all these other issues there was bound to be prolonged debate.
I am not concerned so much with the attitude of the Minister on one or other occasion. There has been more than one reference to that. I am much more concerned with the necessity in Parliament, no matter who is in office, to table Amendments and to deal seriously with all these aspects because they involve the freedom of the subject to defend his property, however small it be. It involves the freedom of the subject to defend himself against big monopolies—and as we all know there is not a more time-honoured subject that this House has had to deal with than this.
By the Pipe-lines Bill we are dealing with an entirely new departure. We are setting down the pattern for the future. There is, however, one other important aspect. Because we are putting down a new pattern for the future hon. Members have, rightly, time and again in Standing Committee referred to the experiences of other countries, especially the United States, regarding pipelines.

The Minister recognised, though he was not prepared to accept a complete parallel between this country and the experiences of countries overseas, that hon. Members were right in bringing forward the experiences of other countries When considering this important new departure.
All that was done, and there was a good deal of hard work in preparing the information and presenting it to the Committee. There were serious faults in the Bill itself as presented by the Minister. There were arguments about clear definition on essential aspects of the Bill. It was not an argument only between members of the legal profession. It was an argument in which all hon. Members joined on occasion because they felt that the Bill could not be proceeded with properly unless these definitions were clarified.
What are the reasons for these faults and difficulties? They are given in The Times leading article which, with permission, I should like to quote. The earlier part of the leading article says:
Five is a large number in a fairly calm and not particularly congested session"—
referring to the number of Bill Which had been guillotined under the direction of the right hon. Gentleman.
Curtailment of committee proceedings is becoming a habit, and a bad one at that…It does not do to skimp discussion of these things at the Committee stage, yet some of them have still to be considered by the Commons Standing Committee.
The Government, when they introduced this Bill at so late a stage in the Session, knew full well that the House of Commons might need a good deal of time to discuss it. But I submit that they did not realise that so much time would be required in another place. They were caught off guard in that when the Bill was first introduced into another place more time was taken these than they expected. This introduces another serious constitutional issue. It is partly because more time was taken in another place on this Bill than the Leader of the House expected—it is for him to estimate in advance haw much time might be required, and it is for him to advise the Cabinet on these matters—end because he was wrong that we in this House are now being hustled to pass this Bill without proper consideration and debate.
It is important that the Government should ensure, with reasonable time land with reasonable opportunity for debate, that the majority must prevail; but it can never be argued that the majority must prevail at all costs. The understanding that we have always had and the understanding that is implied in the procedure of this House—indeed, the understanding implied in all the teaching on the constitution over the centuries—is that the principle that the majority must prevail implies proper time and proper conditions for debate.
It is significant that so far the main burden of argument from the other side of the Committee has been on this issue of public ownership. When a major new development has taken place, as the history of this country and of other advanced industrial countries has shown, we do not legislate just for one particular type of industry. In legislating for pipelines there are a number of commodities that can be used for transmission through pipelines. But we also know that we are here dealing with growing points of industry. We are also dealing with the potentialities of the future. None of us can say with certainty what sort of commodities might he conveyed in this way. We are therefore creating new precedents.
This Bill having been passed, in years to come people who will pass additional legislation or who will be affected in their business by it will all refer to the first occasion when Parliament was dealing with the subject and, whether we like it or not, precedents will have been created. This being the situation, it makes this Bill rather different from other Bills. It is not an additional Measure in a field which has become routine. It sets a new pattern and creates new opportunities. For example, there is the relationship between the smaller and the large firms which may be the first to be in the position to build a pipeline. The Minister is conscious of that fact.
Time and again there has been a great deal of agreement in the Committee. I want to dispel the idea that the Committee has spent all its time with the Minister arguing in one direction and other members of the Committee arguing

in another direction. That is not correct. There have been many occasions when it was agreed between the two sides, whatever we might think about the principles of the Bill, that it ought to be improved as much as possible, and many of the Amendments have been designed for that purpose. On many occasions the right hon. Gentleman has said, "I can see exactly what the hon. Gentleman wants to do. I agree with the purposes behind what he seeks, but I do not believe this is the best way of doing it."
Such utterances by the Minister, which were quite numerous, destroy the charge of deliberate obstruction. The Minister did not say such things lightly and he did not say them to humour us. In fact, he did very little to humour us in Committee—not that I make any complaint of that. The Minister said such things because he was convinced of their truth. We moved many Amendments which were very much to the point and in reply to which he said that he did not agree with the wording or with the method of achieving our object. That sort of thing occurred time and again.
It is not good enough for the Leader of the House to take no notice of that fact. It is not good enough for him to make life so easy for himself. He has said, "There is the principle of common ownership involved here. You want it and we do not." The facts do not support this simple attitude. Whilst it might be argued that hon. Members on the back benches opposite might be satisfied with this sort of easy case and might feel that they have had a Parliamentary triumph by making a few silly remarks about what has gone on in a Committee about which they know nothing, it is not the job of the right hon. Gentleman to make life so easy for himself. He is in a special position. He, among others, is the guardian of our Parliamentary proceedings. He is the representative of all Members of Parliament. He has set out to try to prove that there was nothing but a clash on one principle. He has tried to prove that there was nothing but obstruction.
Curtailment of time for the consideration of a major Bill is one of the most serious decisions that any Government can take. It strikes at the basis of our


procedure. It involves the basis of confidence. The right hon. Gentleman, in the very limited and completely un-instructive way in which he has presented this serious Motion to the House, has done a disservice to democracy, a disservice to his own position and he does not deserve to get this Guillotine Motion passed by the House.

6.18 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Lee: My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) was correct in pointing out that throughout the proceedings of the Committee there have been many occasions of unanimity. It is not true to say that every discussion has been acrimonious. Indeed, one of the main troubles which arose in the Committee was that on some occasions the Minister, having expressed his agreement in principle with Amendments which we on these benches had moved, refused to accept our Amendments and then put them on the Order Paper as his own. It is a little frustrating when the Opposition, without assistance from civil servants or anyone like that, burn the midnight oil in trying to understand a Measure and suggest constructive Amendments, only to be told by the Minister that he cannot possibly accept such ideas and then find later that he has promptly "pinched" them and incorporated them as his own. We are used to this at election times, but we have not reached the point of becoming used to it during the passage of Bills through Committee.
I was intrigued by the intervention of the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Skeet) who seemed to reprimand my hon. Friends for suggesting that the Opposition had a right to put down Amendments.

Mr. Skeet: I did not say anything of the sort. I was referring to the fact that in this case there were not only Amendments put down by my right hon. Friend but there were also a number of Amendments put down by the Opposition, but I do not say that the latter are of any weight at all.

Mr. Lee: I am not on that point. I was looking at the hon. Gentleman's own record. He suggested that much of the Opposition's opposition was fatuous and not really serious. I notice that the

hon. Gentleman put down 12 Amendments, 5 new Clauses and 1 new Schedule of his own.

Mr. Skeet: The hon. Gentleman has not understood the difference between the two sides. On this side, we try to move our Amendments fairly concisely. If that practice had been followed by hon. Members opposite, there would have been no difficulties on the Bill.

Mr. Lee: I like the hon. Gentleman's use of the word "concisely". A short time ago, the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) said that there was no such thing as volunteers on his side of the House. In other words, there is press-ganging of people to sit on Committees. I thought that, when hon. Members opposite offered very little in the discussion, they did this because they were trying to expedite the passage of the Bill. Now, it seems that their attitude was one of being mute of malice. Since they were shanghaied on to the Committee, whether they liked it or not, this was the only way in which they could show their disapproval of the dictatorial attitude of the Leader of the House.

Mr. Nabarro: Certainly not.

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Lee: In asking us to agree to this guillotine Motion, the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the rights of minorities to have their say and of majorities to have their way. This may sound good democratic usage until we remind ourselves that it is not just the liberty of the minority to exercise its right to be heard which is the proof of democracy. Apparently, no question arose in the right hon. Gentleman's mind of the possibility of the majority accepting the arguments of the minority when they were shown to be superior. This is the basis upon which the House of Commons has become renowned throughout the world. If we are to have a peremptory approach by Ministers saying, "We must put up with the Opposition for a little time and then, when they have had their say, we can apply the Guillotine", that will be an end of that.
The Times leading article is absolutely right when it tells the right hon. Gentleman that he has a partiality for the Guillotine which will soon earn him the


title of the Robespierre of debate. There has been a deterioration in the right hon. Gentleman since his days in the Ministry of Labour. I am serious about this. He and his right hon. Friend who is now Minister of Power were in charge of the Factories Act in 1959. That became a very much improved Measure because of the way in which he considered Amendments tabled by the Opposition.

Mr. Nabarro: I was on the Standing Committee.

Mr. Lee: In spite of the hon. Gentleman being on the Committee, it became a good Act. Quality emerged despite such barriers to progress.
The right hon. Gentleman, a forward-looking Minister, a Minister who was interested in trying to produce a better Bill than he at first had tabled, accepted Amendments which, as he knows, have made of that Act a very fine piece of legislation. Had this attitude prevailed in the Committee on the Pipelines Bill, we should have made far greater progress than has been possible in fact.
The Minister's attitude, before a word had been said in opposition, in demanding that we should have afternoon and evening sittings—in other words, open-ended sittings at which he could keep us as long as he liked—showed that he had no intention of listening with tolerance to arguments deployed in order to improve the Bill. While we have been denied the right to have our Amendments or ideas accepted, we find that the inadequacy of the Bill is admitted by the Minister, as is shown by the way he has deluged the Notice Paper with new Clauses and Amendments going far beyond the sphere that even our Amendments at the beginning covered. Taking merely the amount of time available from the moment when the Bill started in Committee to the moment when we shall have to finish if the timetable Motion passes, if the Opposition had tabled no Amendments at all, there would not have been adequate time to discuss the Government's own Amendments and new Clauses in a proper and comprehensive manner.
All we heard from the Leader of the House in opening the debate was that the Government are determined to get

the Bill this Session. They, therefore, insist on a Guillotine which will allow them to get their own Amendments, which is all they are interested in, and what the Opposition suggest is of no account.

Mr. Nabarro: Hear, hear.

Mr. Lee: Mark the "Hear, hear". Apparently, this is democracy in Britain now. If Nkrumah did that, he would be vilified throughout the House, yet the British Government can do it.

Mr. Nabarro: Mr. Nabarro rose—

Mr. Lee: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a few moments when I come to something which he said.
One of the excuses which the Leader of the House gave for the late introduction of the Bill was that it had been foreshadowed in the Queen's Speech. Of course, it was foreshadowed in the Queen's Speech. But this is a Bill with 60 Clauses, and six Schedules, to which many more new Clauses have been proposed since. Is it the argument that, because a sentence or two in the Queen's Speech gave us knowledge that there was to be a Bill about pipelines, we should, therefore, accept that our arguments should be curtailed even before we had seen the contents of the Bill? Arguments of that kind make a mockery of debate on a timetable Motion like this or on any other subject.
The right hon. Gentleman said that there was nothing new about industrial pipelines and that it is necessary to ensure their orderly development. We agree that it is necessary to ensure their orderly development. The Bill as it is still drawn will not ensure their orderly development unless drastic Amendments are made before it leaves Committee. For our part, we have tried to make suggestions and introduce Amendments which would make an orderly Bill of it. For that we are told that the Opposition are merely engaged in wasting time.
I want the right hon. Gentleman to remember something else. During several of the afternoon and evening periods when the Committee was sitting, the Committee stage of the Finance Bill was being taken on the Floor of the House. We had the undignified


spectacle of hon. Members with Amendments down to the Pipe-lines Bill also having Amendments down to the Finance Bill on the Floor of the House. A number of my hon. Friends, and I think hon. Members opposite, had to choose between expressing their wishes as put in Amendments upstairs and foregoing Amendments to the Finance Bill to which they had their names.
The present Attorney-General, when we were in office, was most indignant when a Committee of which I was a member sat all night and he wanted to be down here moving Amendments to the Finance Bill, and he suggested that, whereas it was undoubtedly Tuesday outside the House of Commons, it was still Monday inside, and wanted the Chairman of the Committee to agree that because the Committee has sat all night the clock should stop, rather on the French principle of one minute to twelve. it reminds one of the old song "When its night-time in Italy, its Wednesday over here." The Attorney-General deployed the argument that the Finance Bill was the most serious and important Bill of the Session. It may well be. But it did not alter the fact that the right hon. and learned Gentleman, knowing perfectly well that many members of the Committee wished to move Amendments in the House, compelled us to sit upstairs.
We believe that the conduct of the Minister in forcing this issue has led to much more delay than any other issue. We are discussing not a minor matter, but the creation of a new system of transport in Britain. The use of pipelines, which has been confined in the main in this country to the movement of oil, will speedily spread to many other commodities. There will be a need for pipeline development over a wide sphere and for a large number of commodities. If we begin on the wrong foot and get a wrong analysis of the method by which the pipeline system should devolve, it could be a determining factor in the economic prosperity of Britain a few years from now.
As I say, this is not a minor issue but an issue to which a great deal of time, thought and consideration should he given. Yet the Leader of the House is concerned merely that the Committee is taking a little longer in its delibera-

tion than he thinks necesesary and he desires to impose a Guillotine which will confine us to about six more sittings. I doubt whether more than an eighth or a ninth of the business before the Committee has been completed.
To me, this is a negation of democracy. It makes a mockery of hon. Members' efforts to try to understand a complicated Bill and to assess how they can best utilise their ability to improve it, only to find that the result of their labours is that many proposals may never even be called and others will not adequately be discussed. It makes one wonder whether the nation will take this place as seriously as it has done in the past.
By this Measure, for the first time we are giving to private companies, which, I believe, will develop into private monopolies, power which has never before been conferred on anything other than a public authority. An analysis of the Notice Paper will show that we on this side have been trying to look ahead to the orderly development of the pipeline system in this country on which so much depends.
The hon. Member for Kidderminster said that we were concerned only about tabling Amendments on nationalisation. He should not make such absurd statements. Obviously he has not even looked at the Notice Paper. It is the case and we make no bones about it —that we are thoroughly convinced that this project cannot be a success unless it is under public enterprise. The hon. Gentleman told us that hon. Members opposite wanted nothing of nationalisation. He is wrong. That is not the principle of the Tory Party. All that hon. Members opposite oppose is the nationalisation of industry which can still be used as a vehicle for profit-making. They have been in power for 12 years and the majority of the nationalisation Measures are still on the Statute Book. The only two which they tried to get rid of are the two out of which they could not make profits. They have failed to do that. The hon. Member is the greatest critic of the Govenment for not denationalising Richard Thomas & Baldwins.

Mr. Nabarro: I did not accuse the Opposition of tabling Amendments to the Bill concerned only with nationalisation.


I said, "largely" concerned with nationalisation. In fact, they were largely concerned with nationalisation. The whole purpose of the filibuster by the Opposition has been to impress measures of nationalisation on my right hon. Friend. He would have got into a lot of trouble with me if he had not resisted them as vigorously as he did.

Mr. Lee: Again, the hon. Gentleman is utterly and completely wrong. The only time when Amendments on nationalisation were capable of being placed on the Notice Paper was during discussion of Clause 1. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we finished with Clause 1 a long time ago. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman should look at the Bill. We passed Clause 1 many sittings ago. Since it has been dealt with, Amendments of that type have not been discussed in the Committee.
We seriously believe that, given this time schedule on which the right hon. Gentleman is insisting, the Bill cannot have anything like adequate discussion. If there is discussion and a vote on every Government Amendment and new Clause, I doubt whether we shall be able to give five minutes discussion to each of them. I know that all Governments have to get their business, but again the article in The Times is right. This Session there has been precious little in the way of major legislation. We know that Toryism does not use the House of Commons for that purpose. It uses it as a sort of standstill operation while power resides in the City and elsewhere. This Session there has not been any really major legislation with the exception of this Bill. Yet this is not the first time that we have had to discuss the use of the Guillotine.
In this phase of the development of our Commonwealth in which we take great pride, since they look on this House as the home of democracy where men can discuss and argue about things across the Floor of the House believing that at the end of the day the opinions of minorities will be taken into account, I should have thought that this was the worst time to treat this House in such a disgusting and disgraceful way. Representing as the Government do less than 30 per cent. of the nation, this shocking thing in addition to their dismal record in other spheres should be their ultimate

act, and the sooner that they go the better it will be for Britain.

6.39 p.m.

The Minister of Power (Mr. Richard Wood): We have had a quite lively argument about the Government's action in proposing this Motion. Most of it has been conducted in terms rather more moderate than those which the hon. Member for Newton (Mr. Lee) saw fit to use at the end of his speech. There has been the usual difference of opinion, which, to most of us who heard it, was not wholly unexpected, as to who is to blame for the slow progress on this Bill and as to whether hon. Members opposite have frustrated its progress.
Most of us would agree, I think, that, as we stay in the House of Commons, we get fairly experienced about these matters and generally know by a sixth or seventh sense when Oppositions are trying to frustrate a Measure's progress. Most of us know when an Opposition is anxious to make progress. Also, we know when it has its own reasons for delay.
Naturally, none of us quarrels with the intention of the Opposition, which is the right and proper one, that legislation should be examined with care. When, however, we had spent four hours discussing the procedure Motion at the beginning—which, I should like to make clear, was designed to provide the Committee with sufficient time to consider the Bill; that was the purpose of the sittings Motion—and when we had spent, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster remarked in opening the debate, twenty hours on Clause 1 and another eight or nine hours on Clause 2, I began to be suspicious of the Opposition's intentions.

Mr. Niall MacDermot: How many hours did we spend on Clauses 3 to 7?

Mr. Wood: I was saying that I began to be suspicious at the end of Clause 2. I then suggested that we should sit late and we made, I am glad to say, considerable progress on Clauses 3 to 7. As far as I remember, however, the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot) went to bed before the end of the sitting.

Mr. MacDermot: rose—

Mr. Wood: I cannot give way. I wish to explain these points.
After that short run of progress which the hon. Member has brought to my attention, the Committee had repeated points of order, repeated dilatory Motions, the usual requests for the Scottish Law Officers to come and play a part in our proceedings——

Mr. Willis: We are entitled to have a Scottish Law Officer.

Mr. Wood: —and dissertations on such abstruse conceptions as runrig tenure, the feu superior and even, on one occasion the principles of Machiavelli. All these things began to harden my suspicions into certainty that the Opposition were in no hurry to make progress with the Bill.
It did not seem to make any difference whether I accepted Amendments, and this debate still leaves me in a certain amount of doubt about it. The hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) has congratulated me for being accommodating, with Amendments. The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) has said that I did not accept Amendments. I have referred to the record and found a number of Amendments which I have promised to incorporate on Report. On one occasion, I accepted an Amendment by the hon. Member for Derby, North rather than my own. On yet another occasion, I considered the hon. Member's Amendment so good that I added my name to it. There have been many occasions when I have accepted either the words or the spirit of an Amendment and have undertaken to make further changes myself.
I draw attention to the fact that the hon. Member for Hamilton, very politely and kindly referring to my conduct, said
Without being patronising, may I say that I think this is the way to conduct the Committee stage of the Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 5th June, 1962: c. 641.]
I have repeatedly tried to accept the spirit of Amendments from both sides of the Committee, quite apart from Government Amendments which have been tabled to meet points raised both by speeches and by other Amendments which appeared on the Order Paper.

Mr. Mendelson: I did not congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on accepting

many Amendments. I said that he often resisted our Amendments although prefacing his resistance by the remark that, "There is a lot in what you want to do, but I do not accept the way in which you are doing it."

Mr. Wood: I am sorry, I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. I was taking what he said as an admission that I had not been wholly defensive and stonewalling in my opposition.
When we were left without an issue, particularly in the middle of one night, I remember a long discussion as to whether "effectual" or "effective" was the right word to put in the Bill. Therefore, it did not seem to me to make much difference whether I met the points put by the Opposition. The discussion seemed to continue almost as long if I met them as if I had not.

Mr. T. Fraser: Only one hon. Member in the Committee suggested that "effective" would be better than "effectual". Surely, that is a reasonable proposition to make in the drafting of a Bill.

Mr. Wood: It is quite reasonable, but when I explained my reasons for keeping the word that I had in the Bill, it was questioned certainly by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) and, I think, by others.
All this process was completed when the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Laughlin) admitted on one occasion that he was wasting the time of the Committee. The hon. Member will remember the occasion. The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper) confessed at a recent sitting that he was getting nearly as bad us his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East. I do not know what the bon. Member had in mind.

Mr. Loughlin: I know that the right hon. Gentleman will not wish to be unfair. Will he kindly quote in its context the statement which he has just attributed to me—if he has extracted it, he must have it available—that I was wasting the time of the Committee?

Mr. Wood: As far as I remember, it was on the occasion of a dilatory Motion that the hon. Member said:
I know that this is a waste of time—

Mr. Loughlin: Mr. Loughlin indicated dissent.

Mr. Wood: This was the previous passage:
This is not good enough, for the Committee must consider not only the Minister's convenience, but also that of hon. Members. I know that this is a waste of time—"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 29th May, 1962; c. 340.]
All I am suggesting——

Mr. Loughlin: Do not be so dishonest.

Several Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker. I just heard the hon Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) bawl across the Chamber to my right hon. Friend, "Do not be so dishonest." Is that not strictly un-Parliamentary, and should it not be immediately withdrawn?

Mr. Speaker: It may be distasteful. It is not inevitably un-Parliamentary.

Mr. Wood: I certainly do not intend to withdraw anything, because I have been perfectly honest——

Mr. Loughlin: Dishonest.

Mr. Wood: —in drawing the attention of the House to the words of the hon. Member when he said:
I know that this is a waste of time".

Mr. Loughlin: Do not be dishonest.

Mr. Wood: I am not dishonest.
We have spent nearly 60 hours discussing the Bill. We have reached Clause 12. The hon. Member for Ash- field (Mr. Warbey) suggested that as we were a quarter of the way through the Bill we needed, perhaps, not four times as long as we have spent already, but getting on that way. We have sat the equivalent of 23 two-and-a-half-hour sittings. If we were to follow the hon. Member's suggestion, we should sit for 92 sittings, which most people would consider excessive.
Hon. Members have complained a great deal about the insufficient time for the rest of the Bill. They have drawn my attention to the Government Amendments, which the hon. Member for Newton called a deluge of Amendments. I suggest that hon. Members should do a little of their homework on the Order Paper. It will be perfectly clear to any- one who studies it that not only are many of the Amendments grouped together, but

that a great many of them are designed to meet points which have been raised, a number of them from the Opposition benches in another place, and that the large majority of Amendments in the Government's name are purely drafting Amendments. Only a handful are to deal with points of substance which have not yet been discussed. The same is true of new Clauses.
When a long time ago we were discussing the sittings Motion, the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Blyton) suggested that after the nationalisation issue had been disposed of and after we had got through the complexities of Clauses 8 and 9, we should be able to make considerable progress with the Bill. We must look back as well as forward in these matters, and even if it were true—which I do not accept for a moment—that the remaining time is insufficient for the proper consideration of the Bill, the score of sittings which were available from the middle of May would have given perfectly adequate time to consider the Bill, if the Opposition had had any wish to use that time properly for its consideration.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has explained why the Bill was introduced at the time it was and why it was essential for the Bill to be passed this Session. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that I would have liked to have seen the Bill introduced earlier in the Session. I have explained on several occasions, notably on Second Reading and also at the begining of the Committee stage, why it was that the deliberations which were necessary before the Bill was introduced took quite a long time and why the Bill could not have been introduced to Parliament before early this year.
The House will remember the Select Committee on the Esso Bill and the Government's subsequent decision, which the House as a whole supported, that this development should not any longer he continued by Private Bills, but should be subject to public legislation. The House also supported the approach, which I then announced we intended to make, to the many outside interests which had to be consulted. We had to leave a considerable time for the reception of those views. After that there was the drafting of the Bill which, as hon.


Members have said, is lengthy and complicated. It was for those reasons that the Bill was not introduced into Parliament before this Spring.
It was also necessary for the Bill to be introduced during this Session and it is necessary, for exactly the same reason, for it to be passed during this Session. If it is not passed this Session, there will be a number of possible developments which may well be frustrated, because Parliament has decided that no more pipeline development is possible under the old Private Bill procedure.
The time for the discussion of the Bill, which it has been suggested is short, has been about five months. It was introduced in another place and the other place discussed it very fully and, as I said on Second Reading, made considerable improvements to it. It then came for our discussion and we could have had more than 20 full sittings of the Committee discussing the Bill if there had been a great will to make progress, which did not seem to exist.

Mr. T. Fraser: As the Bill came to the House only two months ago, how can the Minister go on saying that we could reasonably have had 20 sittings of the Committee?

Mr. Wood: We could have had 20 sittings for the reason that the Sittings Motion, which I moved at the beginning of the Committee, would have provided 20 or more sittings if that had been desired. A great deal of the work which had been done in another place on the Bill has been re-done, or anyhow rehearsed, in the Committee and a number of points which I heard and which, no doubt, other hon. Members heard fully discussed in another place have been

gone over again, rather unnecessarily, in Committee.

I have said that there are several important developments which are almost certain to be delayed if the Bill does not soon become an Act. Pipeline development in this country is admitted by everyone, including the Opposition—I do not think there is any difference between us on this—to be of very great importance. The hon. Member for Newton suggested that it was regarded as a very important form of transport for the future. The country will be noting with some interest, and possibly with some weariness, the efforts which the Opposition have been and are making to frustrate and delay this pipeline development, because as we have already agreed in the House that we shall not allow further Private Bills, this is the only means by which pipeline development can be carried on in future.

I think that the country will also be interested in one of the reasons for the Socialist Opposition to the Bill—their belief, which I have mentioned several times, that the pipeline system should be a nationalised system. The Government believe that future developments in pipelines are of far greater importance than the petty delaying tactics of the Opposition and that it is against the national interest for this new form of transport to be frustrated, which, as I hope I have made clear, has been the consistent aim of the Opposition since the beginning of the Committee stage. I therefore ask the House to accept the Motion.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 267, Noes 193.

Division No. 241.]
AYES
[6.57 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Berkeley, Humphry
Burden, F. A.


Altken, W. T.
Biffen, John
Butcher, Sir Herbert


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Biggs-Davison, John
Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)


Allason, James
Bingham, R. M.
Campbell, Gordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)


Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian
Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Carr, Compton (Barons Court)


Arbuthnot, John
Black, Sir Cyril
Cary, Sir Robert


Ashton, Sir Hubert
Bossom, Clive
Channon H. P. G.


Atkins, Humphrey
Bourne-Arton, A.
Chataway, Christopher


Balniel, Lord
Box, Donald
Clarke, Henry (Antrim, N.)


Barber, Anthony
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)


Barlow, Sir John
Braine, Bernard
Cleaver, Leonard


Barter, John
Brewis, John
Cole, Norman


Batsford, Brian
Brooman-White, R.
Collaret, Richard


Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)
Brown, Alan (Tottenham)
Cooke, Robert


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Browne, Percy (Torrington)
Cooper, A. E.


Bell, Ronald
Bryan, Paul
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Buck, Antony
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)
Bullus, Wing Commander Eric
Corfield, F. V.




Costain, A. P.
James, David
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin


Coulson, Michael
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Rees, Hugh


Courtney, Cdr. Anthony
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Craddock, Sir Beresford
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Renton, David


Crawley, Aidan
Joseph, Sir Keith
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas


Crowder, F. P.
Kerans, Cdr. J. S.
Ridsdale, Julian


Cunningham, Knox
Kerby, Capt. Henry
Rippon, Geoffrey


Curran, Charles
Kimball, Marcus
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)


Currie, G. B. H.
Kitson, Timothy
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Sir R. (B'pool, S.)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Lagden, Godfrey
Robson Brown, Sir William


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Rodgere, John (Sevenoaks)


Deedes, W. F.
Leather, Sir Edwin
Roots, William


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Lebum, Gilmour
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard


Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)


Doughty, Charles
Lilley, F. J. P.
St. Clair, M.


Drayson, G. B.
Lindsay, Sir Martin
Scott-Hopkins James


du Cann, Edward
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey(Sut 'nC' dfield)
Seymour, Leslie


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carthalton)
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Sharpies, Richard


Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Longbottom, Charles
Shaw, M.


Errington, Sir Eric
Longden, Gilbert
Shepherd, William


Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Loveys, Walter H.
Skeet, T. H. H.


Farey-Jones, F. W.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)


Fell, Anthony
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Smithers, Peter


Fisher, Nigel
McLaren, Martin
Smyth, Rt. Hon. Brig. Sir John


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Foster, John
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford &amp; Stone)
Maclean, SirFitzroy (Bute &amp; N. Ayrs.)
Speir, Rupert


Frater, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Stanley, Hon. Richard


Freeth, Denzil
McMaster, Stanley R.
Stevens, Geoffrey


Galbraith Hon. T. G. D.
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


Gammans, Lady
Maddan, Martin
Studholme, Sir Henry


Gardner, Edward
Maitland, Sir John
Summers, Sir Spencer


Gilmour, Sir John
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.
Tapsell, Peter


Glover, Sir Douglas
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)
Marlowe, Anthony
Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)


Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)
Marlowe, Anthony
Taylor, Frank (M'ch'st'r, Moss Side)


Goodhew, Victor
Marshall, Douglas
Teeling, Sir William


Gower, Raymond
Martin, Neil
Temple, John M.


Grant-Ferris, Wg. Cdr. R.
Mathew Robert (Honiton)
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Green, Alan
Mawby, Ray
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Gurden, Harold
May don t Lt.-Cdr. S. L. C.
Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.)


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Mills, Stratton
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
Miscampbell, Norman
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Hare, Rt. Hon. John
More, Jasper (Ludlow)
Touche, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Turner, Colin


Harris, Reader (Heston)
Nabarro, Gerald
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Harrison, Brian (Maidon)
Neave, Airey
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Vane, W. M. F.


Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesfd)
Noble, Michael
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Nugent, Rt. Hon. Sir Richard
Wakefield, Sir Wavell


Hastings, Stephen
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian
Walder, David


Hay, John
Oshorn John (Hallam)
Walker, Peter


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Page, Graham (Crosby)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek


Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Page, John (Harrow, West)
Wall, Patrick


Hendry, Forbes
Pannel, Norman (Kirkdale)
Ward, Dame Irene


Hicks Beach, Maj. W.
Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold


Hiley, Joseph
Percival, Ian
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Peyton, John
Whitelaw, William


Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Williams, Dudley (Exeter)


Hobson, Sir John
Pilkington, Sir Richard
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Holland, Philip
Pitman, Sir James
Wise, A. R.


Hollingworth, John
Pitt, Miss Edith
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Hopkins, Alan
Pott, Perclvall
Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard


Hornby, R. P.
Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch
Woodhouse, C. M.


Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Woodnutt, Mark


Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Price, H. A. (Lewisham, W.)
Woollam, John


Hughes-Young, Michael
Prior, J. M. L.
Worsley, Marcus


Hulbert, Sir Norman
Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho



Hurd, Sir Anthony
Proudfoot, Wilfred
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Iremonger, T. L.
Pym, Francis
Mr. Chickester-Clark and


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Mr. Finlay.


Jackson, John
Ramsden, James





NOES


Abu, Leo
Blyton, William
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)


Ainsley, William
Boardman, H.
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)


Albu, Austen
Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Callaghan, James


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W.(Leics, S.W.)
Chapman, Donald


Awbery, Stan
Bowen, Roderic (Cardigan)
Cliffe, Michael


Bacon, Mist Alice
Bowles, Frank
Corbet, Mrs. Freda


Baxter, William (Stirlingshire, W.)
Boyden, James
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)


Beaney, Alan
Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Cronin, John


Benson. Sir George
Brockway, A. Fenner
Croaland, Anthony







Crossman, R. H. S.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Prentice, R. E.


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Probert, Arthur


Dalyell, Tam
Janner, Sir Barnett
Proctor, W. T.


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Rankin, John


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)
Reid, William


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Reynolds, G. W.


Deer, George
Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech(Wakefield)
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Delargy, Hugh
Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Dempsey, James
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Rodgere, W. T. (Stockton)


Diamond, John
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Ross, William


Dodds, Norman
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Royle, Charles (Salford, West)


Donnelly, Desmond
Kelley, Richard
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.


Driberg, Tom
Kenyon, Clifford
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Dugdale, Fit. Hon. John
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Skeffington, Arthur


Ede, Rt. Hon. C.
King, Dr. Horace
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)


Edelman, Maurice
Lawson, George
Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Small, William


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Edwards, Walter (Stepney)
Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Snow, Julian


Evans, Albert
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Sorensen, R. W.


Finch, Harold
Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank


Fitch, Alan
Lipton, Marcus
Spriggs, Leslie


Fletcher, Eric
Loughlin, Charles
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Stones, William


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
MacColl, James
Strachey, Rt. Hon. John


Forman, J. C.
MacDermot, Niall
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Stross, Dr. Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent, C.)


Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh
Mackie, John (Enfield, East)
Swain, Thomas


Galpern, Sir Myer
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Swingler, Stephen


Ginsburg, David
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Taverne, D.


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. G.
Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Gourlay, Harry
Manuel, Archie
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Grey, Charles
Mapp, Charles
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Lianslly)
Mason, Roy
Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)


Griffiths, W. (Exchange)
Mayhew, Christopher
Thornton, Ernest


Hall, Rt. Hn. Clenvil (Colne Valley)
Mellish R. J.
Tomney, Frank


Hamilton, William (West Fife)
Mendelson, J. J.
Wainwright, Edwin


Hannan, William
Millan, Bruce
Warbey, William


Harper, Joseph
Mitchison, G. R.
Weitzman, David


Hart, Mrs. Judith
Moody, A. S.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Hayman, F. H.
Moyle, Arthur
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Healey, Denis
Mulley, Frederick
White, Mrs. Eirene


Henderson,Rt.Hn.Arthur(RwlyRegis)
Neal, Harold
Wilkins, W. A.


Herbison, Miss Margaret
Noel-Baker,Rt.Hn.Philip(Derby,S.)
Willey, Frederick


Hewitson, Capt. M.
Oliver, G. H.
Williams, D. J. (Neath)


Hill, J. (Midlothian)
Oswald, Thomas
Williams, LI. (Abertillery)


Hilton, A. V.
Owen, Will
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Holman, Percy
Padley, W. E.
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)


Houghton, Douglas
Panned, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Winterbottom, R. E.


Howell, Charles A. (Perry Barr)
Pargiter, G. A.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Hoy, James H.
Parker, John
Woof, Robert


Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Parkin, B. T.
Wyatt, Woodrow


Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Paton, John
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Hunter, A. E.
Peart, Frederick
Zilliacus, K.


Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Pentland, Norman



Hynd, John (Attercliffe)
Plummer, Sir Leslie
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. Short and Mr. Redhead.

KENT RIVER BOARD (HARBOUR OF RYE) BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

7.7 p.m.

Mr. Ian Percival: I beg to move, to leave out "now" and at the end of the Question to add "upon this day three months."
Holding as I do a large bundle of documents, I hasten to assure the House that these are not merely the notes for what I have to say. The bundle includes some of the documents which I

have read and considered before tabling the Amendment.
There is a good deal of fact about this which one has to consider before deciding what to do, including a long report from a hydraulic testing station, reports from Ministries, and the Minutes of Evidence given to a Select Committee in another place. I have tried to read and consider those so as to put what I have to say on a factual basis.
This is an enabling Bill. It enables the Kent River Board to carry out works which have many consequences. I am concerned with only two, and to my mind these are the principal ones. The first is that if these works are carried


out they will cost the taxpayer £250,000, because the work is grant-aided. The maximum grant is 85 per cent., and I am credibly informed that there is no known instance of such a project being carried out unless the maximum grant allowed was paid.
It appears from the minutes of the Board's case that it regards £250,000 as a comparatively small sum. I beg to take and advance the view that that is quite a lot of money, and before so much of the taxpayers' money is spent this House should be satisfied that there is a compensating public advantage for it.
The second principal consequence with which I am concerned, and which I shall develop as speedily as I can, is that the Bill entails placing works in a public river. It entails doing something which the Board could not do, despite its wide powers, without the authority of this House, and it entails doing something which many people do not want. It entitles the authority to take powers of compulsory purchase and the like.
The view that I wish to place before the House is that if anybody, be it an individual or a public authority of this kind, or anyone else, wishes to have authority to do something having those consequences, a very heavy onus is placed upon such an individual or body to satisfy the House that there is a sufficient public advantage in the works to justify those two consequences.
I will take the last of the consequences first. It may be said that not many people object to the Bill. There is a society called the Port of Rye Protection Society. I have no connection with it, but I have taken the trouble to ascertain that its President is Lord Killearn and its Chairman is a man called Bagley, who was Mayor of Rye in 1957–58 and 1958–59 and the Speaker of the Cinque Ports in 1958. It has about 600 subscribing members. Many associations must wish that they had 600 subscribing members. The Association objects to the Bill to the extent of having invested much money in opposing it, with the aid of professional representatives, before the Select Committee in another place.
The Royal Yacht Association also opposed it in another place. I do not

know how many members that organisation has, but I believe that it is a substantial number. The inshore fishermen have taken the trouble to send a letter to every hon. Member, opposing the Bill. Other local clubs oppose it. Forty-six farmers have now presented a Petition to the House in opposition. I hope that the House will not be misled into thinking that these are merely 46 rebels or trouble-makers. They are 46 of the people who, if there be any benefit in this scheme, will reap that benefit. Let it not be thought that they are farmers who farm tiny acreages; between them they farm 6,300 acres of the land which it is said will be benefited.
This will not be the first time that it has been said that if all these people did but know it the Bill is in their interests. That proposition does not appeal to me, and I hope that it will not appeal to the House. Surely we should retain the position in which people may form their own view whether or not they want something done. All the organisations and people that I have referred to are against the Bill, and together they constitute a very substantial body.
The next thing that I tried to ascertain was how many people were for the Bill. This was extremely difficult. We just do not know. Part of the Board's case in another place was that nine branches of the National Farmers' Union had a special meeting at which a resolution was passed, 65 to 7, in support of the Bill. That is a powerful majority, and if my Motion has that sort of support I shall not be displeased. But only 72 members attended out of the whole area.
When the matter was before the Committee in another place it was asked how many people benefited from the scheme or would be affected by it. It would be interesting to know these numbers, but no figures are available, and we are left in a position of knowing that many people, rightly or wrongly, do not want it, while an unspecified number are said to be wholly in support if it—all of whom are persons who would presumably derive benefit from it.
I submit that in those circumstances it is incumbent upon the authority seeking these powers to present a very strong case justifying the granting of those powers, which it intends to use in the


face of substantial opposition, especially when it involves the spending of so much public money.
I now turn to the second part of the case that I wish to present. I ought to explain, albeit very briefly, my interest in the matter. It has been suggested—and therefore I grasp the nettle—that this is a case of a Member of the House being put up to oppose a Bill by factions, or even by an individual who opposes it. My hon. Friends have accepted my assurance that that is not so, and I hope that the rest of the House will.
This area is my second home. My mother is, and I easily might have been, a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine). I have spent a great deal of time in the last 20 years in the area immediately surrounding the scheme and in the area which will derive benefit from it, if any does. For between six and nine months I have been listening, virtually every day of every holiday that I have spent in the area, to one side or the other arguing the case. I have heard many friends and relatives, all presenting their views, either for or against it.
In the course of time, two things began to emerge from the discussion. First, there are widely different ideas about the scheme. Many people in the early days were very doubtful about it and, as the days went on, grew more doubtful about it. Secondly, there has been much confusion in people's minds. I heard all sorts of stories about what it would do and what it would not do—some of which had to be wrong. It was for these reasons that I became deeply interested in the matter and sought to acquire some knowledge of it. I felt that I should follow the matter up by endeavouring to acquaint myself with all the material facts, including those contained in the large bundle that I have here, which consists of the Minutes of Evidence taken in another place. It is on all this that I base my case.
This matter has many facets. There is the question whether the harbour will silt up; whether navigation will be improved or ruined; whether the amenities of the town of Rye will be improved or ruined; whether the yachtsmen will have better or worse tides, and so on. About 80 per cent. of the time spent by

the Committee in another place was concerned with these questions.
The House will be relieved to know that 1 shall take no time on any of those points. My two concerns are those which I have already mentioned—whether, irrespective of those facets, a case can be made out for spending a substantial sum of public money and also for giving somebody powers to do something that a substantial number of people do not want done. Before either of those cases can be justified, a substantial public advantage must be shown to outweigh all the disadvantages.
I now pass to a brief reference to the scheme itself. The House will appreciate that I can deal only in outline with this aspect of the matter; otherwise I should detain the House for a very long time. I can assure the House that I will try to be selective, although not unduly long. I have been at great pains to make my selectivity fair. The scheme concerns the drainage of that part of Kent which drains into the River Rother and then through Rye to the sea. It is an area of rich farming land, which the Ministry has encouraged to improve itself over the years since the war, so as to secure an increased and better production of food. Great improvements have been made, and I pay tribute to the part played by the river board in this respect.
The land is now infinitely better drained than it has ever been before to the knowledge of any living person, and it is therefore more suitable for farming and food production. But that does not mean to say that we can go on and on spending public money.
There are three special areas which I had better name, so that when I refer to them the House will know to what I am referring. There are three areas affected. One is called Shirley Moor, one is called Walland Marsh and the other is called Wet Levels. They are all liable to some flooding and this is valuable land in production. No doubt it will be more valuable and no doubt there will be some increased production for every improvement made. The question here is whether the improvement is sufficient to justify itself when it entails the expenditure of so much public money.
The matter has developed in this way. In 1951 the Board put up a comprehensive scheme for very substantial engineering works over quite a length of the River Rother which would have had much greater benefit than this scheme. Right through the evidence one finds that the only really satisfactory answer for Walland Marsh or Wet Levels is substantial engineering works to the river. That scheme was turned down by the Ministry on the basis that
the scheme as proposed is too expensive in relation to the benefits which are likely to accrue.
—not simply on the terms of cost, but that the cost was too great for the benefit which would accrue.
Then the Ministry indicated that it would give serious consideration to proposals for Shirley Moor alone, that being an area of about 6,000 acres. Then, quite properly of course, the Board devised a scheme for Shirley Moor which was in two parts, direct works at Shirley Moor followed by the provision of a sluice. In general terms that was approved by the Ministry, but it is relevant to bear in mind that at that time the total cost of both parts was thought to be £244,000 and at the time of the Ministry approval it was thought that it would give some benefit to about 20,000 acres.
It is also necessary to know that it entails putting a permanent barrage or sluice across the River Rother at Rye Harbour with a lock for navigation, so that there would be a permanent reservoir in the river from there upwards. Plainly, since there would have been substantial benefit all the time, it was on that basis that the Minister approved the scheme in principle. The Board, wisely, went to expert engineers to see what effect, if any, that would have on the harbour and whether it would disturb the tidal flow and result in blocking up the harbour altogether. The Board went to what I think is called the 'hydraulics testing station and was advised that the scheme was dangerous, that it would entail a dangerous silting up of the harbour.
A compromise suggestion was put forward by the station, that instead of having a permanent sluice, there should be a sluice which would remain open

most of the time and a look which would remain open most of the time, but which could be closed in times of flood. This immediately brought about these two significant results. First, we had to have a different kind of sluice, costing a further £150,000, and making the cost of the second part of the scheme £290,000. The original cost of the sluice was estimated at £150,000. That was the first consequence of finding that the first scheme was dangerous from an engineering and from a silting point of view.
The second consequence was that whereas the permanent barrage, as a layman can appreciate, would provide a large reservoir permanently, if the barrage was open most of the time and closed for only about 43 days of the year for flood purposes, immediately there would be a substantial reduction in the benefits deriving from the scheme. So at that stage one finds the cost of the scheme going up by about £150,000 and in addition—although in the Select Committee and in another place there was imposed an obligation to man the sluice 18 hours a day throughout the year, and a dredging operation and so on—the usefulness has gone down very substantially. As was said in another place over and over again, this was a compromise.
All hon. Members have seen the statement about this matter from the promoters of the Bill and that is not unusual. I appreciate that when people have to send out a document which is reasonably short, they may by having to compress everything into it, not express everything as plainly as they had hoped. I take the view that there is one source of information which is reliable and that is the evidence given on oath by witnesses of the Board and which was subject to scrutiny and cross-examination. Indeed counsel for the promoters said that what would be achieved by way of drainage was a matter of evidence. I am content to take this as so and what I am saying is based on that evidence given on oath and subject to cross-examination. This is what appears from it.
First, and to put it shortly, what does this scheme do? It is said in the evidence, time and again, that primarily it is for Shirley Moor—6,000 acres. It


may give some benefit to other land. The Shirley Moor scheme is in two parts. First, there are the works to the extent of £100,000 which are now going on. The figure is roughly £100,000. The second part is the sluice. Let us say the cost is another £300,000. It is said that it is necessary, if the present £100,000 worth of work is done, to spend another £290,000 so as to get the maximum benefit from the £100,000 now being spent. Looked at from that point of view it amounts to £400,000 being spent to benefit 6,000 acres—I stress that it is when looked at in those terms—and it amounts to £67 an acre which I suggest is a bit "hot".
The next question to consider is whether the expenditure of a further £290,000 is necessary to get value for the £100,000. In one sense the promoters were pointing a pistol at the head of Parliament. Their counsel said that there would be a substantial risk of disaster unless something was done to the river and that it was essential to carry out the second part of the work. The evidence of the Board's engineer fell very far short of that. One ascertains from the evidence that the work at Shirley Moor is now half done and that already considerable benefits are being felt from it. It will be obvious to a layman that when 2⅔ miles of a substantial canal is dredged by 4 ft. obviously the reservoir capacity is increased and that water can be drained off the land to a very useful extent. Also it was said in evidence that the improvements already made to Shirley Moor would be sufficient to deal with a sudden disaster such as occurred in the summer of 1958–59. A witness from the board said:
One reason why we proceeded with the Shirley Moor section of the scheme as far as we have is because we can make it work without detriment to any other part of the Rother Valley if we get an occurrence of this type of railfall and flood.
That was without the sluice.
In ordinary weather Shirley Moor does in fact already derive considerable benefit.
So with the expenditure of £100,000 great benefit is experienced by Shirley Moor even without a sluice. Instead of being able to let all the water from Shirley Moor drain into the river at once it will have to be controlled, but the works already done make a very

considerable benefit and they are only half completed. If it is not essential to do the second half to get the benefit from the first half, what does the second half achieve?
It is said that when the sluice is in operation the capacity of the river will immediately be increased by 25 per cent. 12½ per cent. to take up the water from Shirley Moor and 12½ per cent. from the rest of area. When one examines what that means in terms of who will benefit and how much, one finds this sort of thing. The question was put to the engineer:
this scheme which is now before the Committee does not purport to solve the problem in the wet level, although as a sidewind it might improve the rate of draining slightly. Is that the true picture?
The answer was,
Quite true, yes".
Another witness called by the board was asked about his land and said that when the flooding came down it took a month for the land to dry out and then he could use it. Asked what benefit it would be to him, he said that his land would be usable for a slightly longer period. Another witness called by the Board was asked:
How many farmers are going to benefit? How much of your land is grazing? How much is arable?
He was not able to say. These are the questions to which one needs to know the answers before seeing what the advantage is.
One final matter to which I refer before offering comment on the statement before the House suggested that the scheme will stop flooding in Rye itself. I speak with personal knowledge of this and I checked my facts as recently as this morning. If this House should hear what a benefit this would be in stopping high tides coming up to Rye it is right to know what happens when they come up, perhaps on an average two or three times a year, maybe sometimes more. The water comes over the top of the quay. If someone parked a car there not realising that this would happen, he would have to paddle to get the car back again.
I am credibly informed that no houses were flooded last year. From my personal knowledge of these matters the statement we have all been given is a very substantial exaggeration. The only refer-


ence to this matter was in the evidence when the Chairman of the Port of Rye Protection Society was asked about it in the Select Committee in another place. He said that it was unimportant, it did not matter and it did not bother people if the quay was flooded two or three times more a year. I think that perhaps he ought to know.
That is the stage in which the matter was left on the evidence. It is also important to be clear about what the scheme will not do. It is said that it will not guarantee that there will be no flooding of Shirley Moor and that it will not stop flooding on the wet levels or Walland. It will not stop exceptional floods such as those of 1959–60, 1960–61. A question was asked on how many days there were floods in the last 12 years and it was stated that in some years the number was 20 and sometimes it was more. In 1959–60 it was 71 and in 1960–61 it was 113. It was also said that for 200 years there had never been rain like there was in that area in 1961. It would not stop that and it would be no answer to say that it would stop such summer floods as there were in 1958–59. That can be dealt with by the work which has been already done.
It was said by the hydraulic testing people that any substantial improvement in Walland and the wet levels could be achieved only by a direct engineering attack on the River Rother. The whole thing was summarised by three leading questions which were put to the board by the counsel for the promoters at the end of that part of the promoters' case. He put to his witness:
We have never said this is to guarantee, to prevent, any flooding at all in Shirley Moor, not even there?
The answer was "No". He said:
It would substantially and materially assist the position?
The answer was "Yes". He went on:
would it be right or not to say that it is part of the Shirley Moor scheme, and an essential part of it, that certain other lands will get some benefit from it?
What those "certain other lands" were and what that "some benefits" was, were matters left in the air.
I wish briefly to return to the statement received by all hon. Members today and to make comments on it in order to illustrate the problem with

which the board is presented and I suppose therefore it hopes to persuade this House to grant these powers. It was said in paragraph 3:
The gravity of this problem may be illustrated by the fact that in 1958 the farming community in one part of the valley suffered damage as a result of flooding to the extent of £24,600.
I think it unfortunate that that was stated. It may not have been intended in the hurry of preparing the statement, but it suggested that there was an inference to be drawn from that. It is that this Bill would help in the matter, but it would not do so. The evidence is that the sluice would not help in that kind of flooding and the flooding on Shirley Moor is already dealt with by the works which have been carried out there.
On the second page of the statement the argument is advanced that
Considerable progress has been made in the carrying out of the land drainage improvements in the Shirley Moor area but, as it is dependent on the other part of the scheme it cannot be completed without making the position worse in other areas also draining into the River Rother.
That is not in accordance with the evidence put before the Committee. It is said that substantial benefit has already been obtained without drainage into the river. Of course it cannot be used to the full, but that statement is not correct. I ask hon. Members in reading the last part of the statement about the number of acres said to benefit from the scheme to compare that with the views I have put before the House and to form their own opinions.
It may be said that we ought to support the river board because it is a good river board. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear hear."] My hon. Friends apparently agree with that. If that means that we ought to support a river board simply because it is a river board and has done good work, I beg to differ. I suggest that every river board, like every other public authority, must stand on the merits of each scheme it puts up This board has enjoyed a considerable measure of confidence and support. I believe that the total spent by it in the last ten years has been about £11 million. That does not mean that every scheme put forward has been good simply because the board put it forward. Nor does it mean that we ought


blindly to say, "This is a good river board; we should support it."
It may he said that in these areas a large number of people have complained over and over again in the last year or so about floods on their lands. I dare say that this was because in the last two years we have had quite exceptional floods, particularly in 1960–61—the worst for 200 years.
But if that sort of evidence is put before hon. Members, I ask them to weigh against it the picture which I have tried to give of what the scheme will achieve. It is admittedly not capable of getting rid of all these floods. Possibly there will be comparisons with other drainage schemes. There has been a big one in my area. But I submit that these are not relevant. If the scheme will not stand on its own merits, then comparing it with others does not improve its merits.
It may be said that the matters with which I have dealt are for the Minister to consider on application for grants. With respect, I beg to differ from that view, and I will give two reasons for doing so. First, my hon. Friend's officials are concerned essentially with drainage, and they do not have to consider, as I respectfully submit that the House should consider, the other interests which are involved. My hon. Friend apparently demurs. This may be a matter of opinion. The Minister will have to consider the suggested benefits in detail. This is plain from the report made by one of his officers to Parliament when the matter was before another place, because the report of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the other place ended by stating that when the applications for grant are submitted the Minister will have to consider the specific proposals dealing with the benefits which it is thought will be secured.
I submit that this is the wrong way round. Let the specific proposals be put to the Minister first, let his officials comment on them and let them then be brought back to the House so that the House has the information which it needs in order to decide whether the public advantage in this scheme outweighs the disadvantages of the expense and of doing what many people do not want done.
Every hon. Member could list a dozen projects known to him on which a quarter of a million pounds could be spent to great public advantage, with great public satisfaction and without upsetting a single person. But time and again every hon. Member has been told, "We quite agree that so-and-so is a positive disgrace but it must take its turn in the priorities and we have not yet got to it." I feel that this sort of expenditure must also take its turn.
The House has very little control over public expenditure, and this is one of the few instances in which an opportunity occurs to Parliament, when enabling powers are sought, to have a little say in it. I respectfully submit to the House that we should have presented to us a much clearer and more specific case of the advantages which are sought to accrue so that we may decide for ourselves whether the public advantage is adequate. If the board has a good case, the decision to postpone Second Reading will in no way kill the Bill. It can put its specific proposals to the Minister and these can be examined by his officials. His further report will be fuller and more useful. When the Bill comes back to the House, if the board decides to proceed with it, we shall then know on what to base a decision.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) must have been more fortunate in some of his visits to these areas than I have. On many occasions I have specifically gone to inspect the flooding which has taken place. I recall, in particular, the visit which I made in September, 1958, when I saw a considerable area of farming land which had been flooded—a situation which I certainly do not want to see perpetuated. In 1960 the floods occurred again and covered 30 square miles. If my hon. Friend takes the view that this House ought to sit back and to leave such a situation without taking immediate action, I must differ from him.

Mr. Percival: My hon. Friend must bear in mind that that happened once in 200 years.

Mr. Irvine: I have given specific examples of two occasions in two years. I do not know the exact acreage of the


1958 floods, but they were certainly very serious, and I was implored by my constituents to see that some action was taken. I am not satisfied to sit back and allow the situation to be perpetuated, particularly on the sort of arguments which my hon. Friend has put forward.
He also said that this matter about houses in Rye is of very small importance because, as I understand him, in his view there are no houses in Rye which could possibly be harmed by floods.

Mr. Percival: I said that they had not been harmed.

Mr. Godman Irvine: It will be of interest to him to learn that I have been there on occasions when houses have been flooded. Not many months ago he could have seen in the local Press, if he had been there, pictures of houses with water in their ground floors. If there are, as the board says, a thousand houses which would be affected by this scheme, that is a reason for taking immediate action. Perhaps I need not remind my hon. Friend that when I see people in that situation they urge upon me that some action should be taken forthwith to see that the desparate situation in which they are living is relieved. I do not believe that this measure should be put off. It should have the support of the House, and for that reason I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
I understand that two points have been made against the Bill. The first is that a large number of people are opposed to it. First, my hon. Friend mentioned the Port of Rye Protection Society, which has 600 or so members. I am certain that everybody in the House wishes to protect the Port of Rye, and if I had the slightest feeling that there would be any damage to the Port of Rye or the amenities of Rye, I should not be commending the Bill to the House.
The second group of opposition to the Bill which my hon. Friend mentioned was the Royal Yachting Association. He will have noticed that the Royal Yachting Association has decided not to oppose the Bill in this House.

Whatever the position was in the House of Lords, the Royal Yachting Association is not coming here with a Petition. As my hon. Friend knows, certain Amendments have been made to the Bill to deal with points raised in the other place by the Royal Yachting Association. I therefore ask him to remove that Association from his list of people who were strongly against the Bill.
I understand that the National Federation of Inshore Fishermen has taken the trouble to communicate with many hon. Members. The Federation has not given me the benefit of its views, perhaps because I have already disclosed my views about the Bill. It must be borne in mind that the Federation did not petition in the other place, nor has it petitioned in this House. Its chairman gave evidence before the other House. It may well be that the points which he made there and might wish to make here were considered by the other place and found not to carry as much weight as my hon. Friend would like them to carry.

Mr. Frederick Peart: Many of us, who are in a sense acting in a rather different capacity from the hon. Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) and others, who have passionate views either for or against the Bill, would like the position of the inshore fishermen cleared up. I know Rye Harbour. I should like to know categorically whether the scheme would harm the interests of inshore fishermen. Is that why they have made their protests? The statement on behalf of the promoters of the Bill says that
the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee who are concerned to protect the interests of the local fishermen
has not opposed the Bill.
However, I am informed that on 12th April the same Committee passed a resolution opposing the Bill. Who is right? I am an outsider, a person rather detached about the Bill. We must be certain of our facts. I received in my mail this morning the statement on behalf of the promoters of the Bill, which contains an assertion that the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee has not opposed the Bill, but I understand that on 12th April the Committee passed a resolution opposing the Bill. Perhaps


the Ministry can clear this up, otherwise we shall be in difficulties, because the evidence submitted to hon. Members is conflicting. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary knows that I made speeches on the Sea Fish Industry Bill, which has nothing to do with this, showing my great bias towards inshore fishermen. I speak for my own port of Mary-port——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston): I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is coming a little close to turning this interruption into a speech.

Mr. Peart: I would hesitate to do that. I hope that I am not being discourteous to the hon. Member for Rye, but I should like this matter cleared up, even though I have gone into it in too much detail.

Mr. Godman Irvine: By a stroke of good fortune, I have with me the minutes of the Sussex Sea Fisheries District, Local Fisheries Committee. A meeting was held at the Town Hall, Brighton, on Thursday, 12th April. There is a very lengthy item in paragraph 7 headed, "Kent River Board (Harbour of Rye) Bill". If the hon. Member wishes to have a look at the minutes, I will hand them to him. It may meet his point if I read the last sentence of the paragraph.
It was resolved that the Clerk attend the Proceedings before the Select Committee and that a letter should be sent to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food informing the Minister of the Committee's views in regard to the matter.

Mr. Peart: What are the Committee's views? Is the Committee for or against?

Mr. Godman Irvine: The clerk was to attend and listen. That is all that appears here. I will gladly hand the minutes to the hon. Gentleman, but there is nothing in the paragraph to show what the Committee's views may be. Perhaps the Minister can help us. I will make some further inquiries. Whatever the Committee's views may have been, it is not petitioning this House.

Mr. James Callaghan: I have here the minutes of the proceedings before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on 16th May. I will read a passage from the evidence of Mr. George Steel:
Q. Do you give evidence on behalf of the Sussex Sea Fishery Committee …? A. I give

evidence on behalf of the Sussex Sea Fishery Committee and as Chairman of the Federation of English and Welsh Inshore Fishermen...
Q. And has the Sussex Sea Fishery Committee passed a resolution authorising you to give evidence on their behalf? A. They did at our last meeting.…
That was the meeting of 12th April. Anybody who reads Mr. Steel's evidence will agree that he is opposed to the Bill. Whether the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee has formerly petitioned or not does not disguise the fact that Mr. Steel was opposed to the Bill. He told me this afternoon that the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee has no standing in the matter and that is why it has not petitioned.

Mr. Godman Irvine: Far be it from me to adjudicate on what the standing of the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee may be. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Steel is a member of the Committee.

Mr. Callaghan: He is the chairman.

Mr. Godman Irvine: Strangely enough, if he is chairman he was not in the chair on this occasion. It is news to me if he is the chairman. Mr. Cheal was in the chair of the Sussex Sea Fisheries District, Local Fisheries Committee, on 12th April, 1962. Mr. Steel may well be chairman of the Federation which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. There is no indication in the minutes of the meeting that the Sussex Sea Fisheries District is against the Bill.

Mr. Peart: Or for it.

Mr. Godman Irvine: Or for it. One would have thought that the Committee has had the opportunity to decide whether it wishes to petition this House. It has apparently decided not to petition. I was under the impression that the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee is the statutory body charged with the duty of looking after the interests of fishermen. It has given no indication to me that it opposes the Bill.
As to the position of fishermen, it may be of assistance to the House if I indicate the dimensions of the problem. I am informed that in 1955 there were five fishing vessels in the Port of Rye. In the present year there are 35. I am informed that there are only nine professional full-time fishermen. In these circumstances, and as I have no indication that the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee is against the Bill, I suggest that


there is no indication that there would be any real damage to fishermen if the Bill went through. I find it difficult to see how there could be damage to fishermen, because they will be able to use the port at all times, with the exception of when the gate is closed. When the gate is closed it will be manned and the lock will work. It would be a question of going through the lock. I see someone on the Opposition Front Bench with naval experience. I need not explain to him that going through a lock is an operation which can successfully be undertaken by fishermen.

Mr. Callaghan: As the hon. Gentleman knows, in this matter we all speak for ourselves as private Members. The fishermen are troubled, first, about the danger of silting up. There is no guarantee about clearing the silt until after it has occurred. They are worried, secondly, about the difficulty of getting to their quays. They are likely to be denied access to them. They are worried, thirdly, about the difficulty of getting in and out of the harbour on one tide. There are a number of difficulties which have been put to me by the Federation of Inshore Fishermen of England and Wales—old friends of mine—which I see no reference to in the Bill.

Mr. Godman Irvine: These are matters which could be ventilated in the Committee. They are not matters which would lead anybody to support the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Southport. Their fears about the grave danger of not being able to get to their quays and possible difficulties of getting through the lock are the sort of points which should be discussed in the Committee. We cannot settle such points here today, nor do they constitute valid reasons for throwing out the Bill on the Floor of the House.
Silting is a usual argument when civil engineering works are proposed at the outlet of various rivers. This is one of the points which has been considered.
The Hydraulics Research Station had its mind specifically directed to it, and it is on its advice that this scheme has been accepted. Evidence was given in another place about two rivers of similar situations and dimensions to the River Rother, both in Western Germany. One

is the River Leda, which is a tributary of the Ems, and which has been working a similar scheme to this since 1954, with complete success and no suggestion at all of silting. The second is the River Este, which is a tributary of the Elbe, and which has only recently been completed. These two rivers were selected because they are in very similar situations to the river that we are discussing.
I was interested before the war in the matter of the flood protection schemes in the Great Ouse and if anyone is anxious about the possibility of silting and looks at the work which has been done there he will find that, notwithstanding the very difficult situation at the mouth of the river, the work has not led to the difficulties which many people forecast at the time.
There is in the current issue of the Journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers a report on a visit to these works, and there it will be seen that the gates are closed all the time the water is coming in and they open when the tide is going out. In those circumstances there has been no material silting, and I would say that silting has been rather exaggerated in the context of this Bill. That is the position of our inshore fishermen. I have no indication either that there is any opposition from what I regard as the responsible Committee coming to this House, or, indeed, that there is any real reason for anxiety by the fishermen.

Mr. Peart: What about the Port of Rye Protection Society?

Mr. Godman Irvine: I shall be very happy to mention it. My hon. Friend dealt with it only in a side wind and I had in fact not decided to deal with the details of what it says. If it would be of some assistance to my hon. Friend's case, I will deal with the points which the Port of Rye Protection Society has sent to us today. The first is that it believes that there is a very grave risk of the proposed barrage spoiling the beauty and jeopardising the future prosperity of the ancient town.
I have already indicated that I would find it difficult to believe that there is any hon. Member who would not want to protect the beauty of or who would want to jeopardise the prosperity of that town. Nothing has


been brought to my attention either, during the period that I was attending the Committee in another place or elsewhere, which would lead me to believe that there was any genuine risk of that happening.
Secondly, it says that the sole purpose of the barrage is to improve the drainage of Shirley Moor, an area of only 6,000 acres. I have already indicated that there are other benefits which will be granted if this scheme is brought to fruition. The first that I have mentioned is that houses and schools are flooded in Rye and the second is that the total area benefited as a result of the scheme is not 6,000 acres which is the direct total but a total of 20,000 acres which is the evidence given in the other House. If the benefits which are expected from adjacent land are also included, the total may well be in the area of about 40,000 acres, which is very considerably more than the 6,000 acres set out there.
The £400,000 is more or less agreed. Then it is said that the matter is highly controversial. I was dealing with some of the people who were alleged by my hon. Friend to be against the scheme when he asked me to deal with this other point, so perhaps I could now complete what I was considering by saying that when we look at the people who are against the scheme, we find a total of 46 farmers who have put their signatures to the petition, if my hon. Friend's arithmetic is correct—I have not done the sum myself. What he did not mention was that there was this meeting of nine brandies of the National Farmers' Union, at which only five people were against the scheme——

Mr. Percival: I am sure that my hon. Friend does not wish to misquote me. I gave the precise figures: 65 voted for the scheme, and 5 voted against it.

Mr. Godman Irvine: My recollection is that I quoted that figure of 5, which my hon. Friend gave, and which I believe is the true figure——

Mr. Percival: My hon. Friend must not say that I did not mention the meeting, because I did.

Mr. Godman Irvine: I apologise, because I know that my hon. Friend did mention it and quoted the figures. What

he has not mentioned is that a good many other people connected with the farming world certainly are in favour of the scheme. The farmers are represented on the Board, not only by the county chairman of the National Farmers' Union in East Sussex but also by one of the East Sussex representatives on the Council of the National Farmers' Union.
When dealing with the body of opinion against the scheme, my hon. Friend did not say that none of the three councils elected and responsible for the area—the Rye Borough Council, the Battle Rural District Council and the East Sussex County Council—has found it necessary to oppose this Bill in either House. Therefore, when my hon. Friend suggests that there is a strong body of opinion against the scheme, I can say that there is certainly a strong body of opinion in favour of it.
That brings me to the last point in the Port of Rye Protection Society's document, which deals with there being some method of conserving water as a result of Measures we are expecting in this House in the not far distant future. It so happens that the engineer to the Board was a member of the Proudman Committee, so he, above all, should be well aware of this problem of water conservation. He tells me that if the Board were invested with all the powers proposed for the new river authorities he could not suggest that a scheme other than the present one should be undertaken, or that the scheme should be modified in the interests of water conservation. Water conservation was raised in another place, and I do not think that any more can be done about that at the present time.
My hon. Friend suggested that it is the cost that has really led him to oppose the scheme——

Mr. Ede: It is a lot of money.

Mr. Godman Irvine: Yes, but if we take the amount to be spent, and divide it by 20,000 acres, which is the minimum that will be directly benefited, it works out at £14 10s. an acre; on 40,000 acres, of course, it is £7 5s. If land drainage is something that should be undertaken at all, we can compare that figure with the cost of some other schemes. The


Great Ouse flood protection scheme, begun in 1954, involves an expenditure of £9 million and deals with 189,000 acres. That works out at £47 an acre, which puts the cost of the Rye scheme in a very favourable light.
Next, I draw my hon. Friend's attention to a scheme in his own county of Lancaster. It is the Crossens scheme, which covers the land behind Southport and Birkdale. That scheme was completed in 1961, and £1 million was spent on it. That affects 32,000 acres, as against the 14,000 that the present scheme will benefit——

Mr. Percival: I have listened very patiently to my hon. Friend's mathematics. He says that 20,000 acres will be directly benefited, but will he do what has never yet been done, and tell us precisely what benefit those 20,000 acres will get? The evidence merely states that it will be of direct benefit to 6,000 acres, and of some benefit to certain other land. The scheme he has mentioned, which is not in my division but just outside it, is one to which I myself referred. That is a major engineering works of the kind contemplated in the comprehensive scheme. The two figures are not comparable, but if my hon. Friend wants to develop the case, he should tell us what are the benefits accruing to the 20,000 acres and to the 40,000 acres.

Mr. Godman Irvine: If my hon. Friend will contain himself for a moment, I shall quote from the Minutes of Evidence but, first, I want to finish what I was saying about that other scheme. From the figures I have just quoted it will be seen that it benefits 32,000 acres, so that the cost works out at £31 an acre, which is very largely in advance of the cost for the scheme we are now considering. Therefore, if my hon. Friend is desirous of working on this principle which he has enunciated on several occasions—the small public benefit which is to be obtained from the scheme—the might have enunciated that principle a little nearer to his own constituency rather than doing it in mine.
I promise my hon. Friend that I shall not deal with the technical evidence given on behalf of the Board, but with that given by Mr. Horace Denton Morgan, who was called on behalf of one of the

objectors. Mr. Morgan is a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and senior partner in the firm of Sir William Halcrow and Partners. He was asked:
9. I think the object of this scheme is to achieve the maximum degree of temporary storage for river flow at minimum cost? (A.) That is correct, yes.
10. And to be quite fair about this, if that were the only consideration and if that could be done with no effect on other interests, I do not think you would criticise it as a method of doing that, would you? (A.) No. It is the right engineering choice leaving all considerations aside, getting the result you want and not having to worry about any other interests.
11. Chairman: Would you say that again? (A.) I am sorry, if one ignores completely all other interests—interests of navigation, interests of yachting, everything else—for simply getting the effect that you want, well, it is the right engineering choice in my opinion to place it where it is proposed if that is the only consideration.

Mr. A. P. Costain: Was that an objector to the scheme?

Mr. Godman Irvine: That evidence was given by a witness called by an objector, and he says that this is the right answer. I have dealt with most of the other interests, such as navigation, yachting and so on——

Mr. Callaghan: I must say that the Bill seems to be drawn wholly in the interests of drainage and not at all in the interests of navigation. The inshore fishermen have every right to object to such things as Clause 11 (3), which deals with the number of days in each year, especially in the winter, when the harbour can be shut at the discretion of the Commissioners, without accounting to anyone but the county council. I am all in favour of the county council, but what about the fishermen?

Mr. Godman Irvine: As I think the hon. Gentleman agreed just a moment ago, that sort of point can very well be taken elsewhere.

Mr. Callaghan: I did not interrupt the hon. Gentleman earlier when he mentioned that, but that is why I am willing to support the Amendment. Representations have been made about this, but no reply has been received. All the inshore fishermen knew about it was when they were presented with the Bill on the morning that it was presented in the


House of Lords. I do not see why we should deal with these chaps in this way. They are not so well briefed as the powerful river boards are, and must look to hon. Members to study the procedure. If they had had an assurance and had been dealt with fairly, I would not be here tonight, but I do want an assurance from the hon. Member, the Minister, or someone about the treatment of these men, whose livelihood will be affected.

Mr. Godman Irvine: In the circumstances, then, I greatly regret that the hon. Gentleman has found it necessary to attend this evening. Unfortunately, I cannot give him the assurance for which he asks, but I can say that over the many months during which this Bill has been under consideration, I have made a great many efforts—I do not say with the inshore fishermen, because they have not approached me at all, but with a great many people who said they were not in favour of the Dill—Ito see whether they would discuss the matter either with me or the Board, and not one appointment has been kept——

Mr. Percival: With respect, one of those appointments was kept—by me.

Mr. Godman Irvine: But, if I may say so, at an extremely late hour this afternoon. Had this matter been put to me or to the Board at an early stage, or even at this stage, there is no reason to suppose that some accommodation could not have been reached. I am not aware, even from what the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) has said, what the real objection is, because there is a lock. As far as I know, I have been given no indication by the fishermen of any real difficulty. If I were aware of it, I would do what I could to urge their case with the Board. I therefore hope that, for the various reasons I have advanced, the House will give this Bill its Second Reading.

8.20 p.m.

Mr. Jack Jones: At the serious risk of being asked, "What has this to do with you?", I would make it clear at the outset that since the Bill affects Kent and the River Rother—although I do not intend to engage in a private war that seems to be raging among hon. Gentlemen opposite—I want to make certain that the Measure does

not have any adverse effects on people who fish in inland waters.
The inshore fishermen go out to sea, catch their fish and return with them to get the best prices they can obtain. The plight or otherwise of inshore fishermen can be dealt with on another occasion, certainly by hon. Members who are better versed in the subject than I. It is stated in Part I of the Bill:
And whereas it would be of public and local benefit to improve the drainage of low-lying lands the drainage of which is directed to the river and to afford protection to such lands from tidal flooding and this can be achieved to the best advantage by the construction and operation of the sluice and other works by this Act authorised, as in this Act provided.
I am concerned with drainage that goes into rivers and the effect of people leaving open sluices which should be shut.
I realise that some hon. Members represent the interests of yachting and it is a fact that yachts will sail as long as the water is deep enough and the wind is available, irrespective of whether or not fish is in the water. I happen to be the chairman of the County Palatine (Lancashire) Anglers Association and, therefore, have a certain degree of knowledge of this subject. I recall that just a few weeks ago a certain sluice was left open and tens of thousands of fish got out to sea. That meant death for them because they were not salt water fish.
I took part in a small fishing competition last Friday night. Only seventeen of us participated in a works competition. It is worth mentioning, in this connection, that at the moment Britain is beset with many evils, not least of which is the discontentment among workers. All the time, even though spending more money, the workers who fish in these works competitions and who sit on river banks are finding that less fish is available and there is less free water for them to fish in.
If I thought that the money proposed to be spent under the Bill would have an adverse effect on these working-class fishermen I would certainly oppose its expenditure. After all, several hon. Members would like to see £250,000 spent on our canals. An awful lot of canal improvements could be achieved for an expenditure of that amount.
I urge the Minister to ensure that when any work is done—and I am a practical fellow who realises that £250,000 is never readily spent by any Government, particularly this one, unless there is a good reason for doing so—the interests of the angler are not prejudiced. I do not want to see money spent on the production of sluices that will provide an easy access for effluent into the sea, particularly if the effluent is not of the right type. Money spent in this way to defray the cost of proper effluent sluice work would be unwise expenditure.
At present 3½ million people, including many women, peacefully sit on our river banks fishing. More and more are taking part in this recreation all the time and, unfortunately, the banks on which they can do their fishing are becoming restricted, as is clean water in which they can fish. I am talking about a decent crowd of fellows. They are not unduly concerned with politics, and when they go to work on a Monday morning after having spent a part of the weekend fishing I can assure hon. Members that they have got more out of their recreation than have those who have spent their leisure time at Wembley, Old Trafford or even Lords. What would the spectators at Lords say if someone came along and threw a lot of dirty water over the ground? They certainly would not like it, nor would the patrons of Old Trafford. There would be a riot. It is for this reason that I urge the Minister to ensure that any money spent under the Bill will not have a detrimental effect on the River Rother.
To be quite frank, I have never seen the River Rother. I have heard a lot about it and now intend to visit it. I trust that the Bill will not have a detrimental effect on our inland water fishermen and that their interest will be safeguarded.

8.27 p.m.

Mr. W. F. Deedes: I wish to say a few words tonight, not least because some of the land which this Measure is designed to protect is farmed by my constituents. In some respects I would sooner have taken no sides whatever. Hitherto, I have not done so. I have friends on both sides of the River Rother and have been

approached persuasively on this matter, as have other hon. Members, by those who are for and against the Bill.
Frankly, up to now I have felt that my obligation lay in trying to give to those who have approached me a fair run. I think I have done so. Everything at the moment concerning the arguments against and in favour of the Bill appears to be seen in black and white according to which side—against or in favour—one is on. In reality, however, having done my best to study all its implications, the whole thing is a great deal less simple. I say this because I am neither a nautical man nor an engineer.
Those who have petitioned against the Bill—and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) leads them here tonight—are not opposing it merely for the sake of doing so. Nor are the Bill's sponsors mere extravagant bureacrats, as some would make them out to be. A lot of money will be spent if the Measure goes through, no matter how one averages out the number of acres on which it will be spent or which or what will benefit by the expenditure.
When one is dealing with nature, moreover, particularly nature in this part of the world, one is dealing with something that is wholly unpredictable. I do not accept that because certain things are being done it is certain that certain things must necessarily follow. We are discussing a strange part of England. If one examines the history of this part of the country one finds that curious changes have occurred on the coastline and also to parts of the former entrances to the rivers. Thus one must be careful before asserting that what the technical experts say must be right.
Looking at this from a non-technical point of view, one must consider the interests of the farmers who use this marsh area. And ultimately one has to judge where the balance of advantage lies. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary, who will, no doubt, touch on some of the doubts that have been raised, will help hon. Members to see where the balance does lie. It would seem to me that the Bill should be supported.
Some of the aspects in favour of the Measure have been mentioned by my


hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) while the objections to it have been stated by the hon. Member for Southport. I always find the latter is at his best in waters deep or shallow. We have met on a similar occasion here before. It is flattering that our part of the kingdom should rouse this amount of interest from hon. Members so distantly connected with it.
There are, however, aspects of expression against the Bill to which I must call attention. The opposition began, as it reached me, largely as a defence of Rye, its harbour and its fishermen and there are good reasons for defending all three. Rye harbour is of great natural beauty and historical importance, and to claim that it is only a playground of yachtsmen is quite false. It is of immense value and provides a livelihood for fishermen in the vicinity—just as the surrounding marsh provides the livelihood of farmers. Then there were technical difficulties raised, in respect of which I find myself rather out of my depth. Whether a sluice or a barrage should be provided and what the consequences would be I find it difficult to judge adequately. But as we went along I have noticed a tendency for this legitimate opposition to broaden its channels. What began as simple opposition on simple grounds has tended as it were to gather sticks in order to beat the backs of the river board. One expression that I read in a letter was "A gross waste of public money". If that convinces some hon. Members, it does not wholly convince me, because I wish to dwell on the point which really affects my constituents—the damage that flooding can inflict on the land.
The River Rother is a notorious flooder. When in flood, which may occur as many as three times a year, it can cover about 5,000 acres. At its peak it can inundate three times as much land. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Southport will "pick me up" if I am wrong. I am trying to be fair. The risks are not negligible. They have been experienced.
Apart from agricultural damage, this flooding can have the most disagreeable consequences. In 1958, the year mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Rye, the floods on Shirley Moor did something that I have never heard of before. They rotted the crops which

were waiting to be gathered, and the flood water entered the Hythe Military Canal, killing all the fish. I do not say that was a national disaster, but the local angling society, with which I have some connection, suffered some mischief and the river board bad to re-stock the whole canal. I believe that I am quoting from history here. This only indicates the curious results which can occur when Shirley Moor floods. The most vulnerable part of the area is Shirley Moor and its 6,000 acres. I do not attempt to exaggerate its farming qualities, but it is excellent farming land.

Mr. Percival: My hon. Friend invited me to "pick him up" if he said anything on which I thought something might usefully be added. The 1958–59 floods were in August and September. They were most exceptional, and the evidence is that a sluice would not have helped at all but that the work that is in hand, costing £100,000, which does not depend upon this Bill, would deal with such floods. I had some personal connection with those floodings, and I know that they were very serious, but this Bill would not help in that kind of flooding.

Mr. Deedes: I am not quoting the floods in 1958 or what I believe was an exceptional event to justify a sluice itself. My hon. Friend knows that £100,000 is being spent on the drainage of the area, and towards making that £100,000 job a surer job than it might otherwise be a sluice would make a contribution.
It is not quite right to say that a sluice would benefit only Shirley Moor's 6,000 acres. The whole of this low-lying basin of some 20,000 acres, I am informed—I cannot prove it—may get relief, and twice that area may gain indirect relief from the effect of tidal flooding. If that is incorrect, I am sure my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will say so. It is fair to add that farmers and agricultural interests are in favour of the scheme. This is not marginal land. It is some of the best agricultural land in the country.
It has been suggested that these powerful agricultural interests are opposed only by a handful of yachtsmen who use Rye harbour and some fishermen. That is totally unfair. Rye harbour is not simply a pleasure ground, and those who support the Bill on such grounds do


their cause no good. The fishermen have their interests and their livelihoods, as do the farmers. I hope my hon. Friend will answer the doubts raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) because I concede they are important points. Yet I find it very hard to believe that the Corporation of Rye, with which I have no close concern, would support a Measure which is inimical to the fishermen of the port but would help farmers some way outside the responsibility of this corporation.
We are told that this scheme is grossly extravagant. I am not going to compare it with other schemes. Figures have already been given, but the fact is anything that one does not want is always grossly extravagant. The sum of £400,000 sounds a great deal. I am satisfied that, on balance, it is proportionately not more than ought to be—and sometimes is—spent on this kind of work. The House will recall that on more than one occasion when coastal defence and sea defence work has been discussed in this House the problem has usually been one of neglect and not one of over-emphasis. Anything to do with coastal defence is expensive.
I also believe that there is some feeling on the subject of siltration. This is alleged to be inevitable without increased dredging of the tidal estuary. The petitioners make a strong point of the suggestion that the result of the barrage would be increased siltration and the ruination of this piece of river and the harbour. I do not dismiss that at all, but I think the burden of proof lies on them to some extent. They say that it would jeopardise the existence and the future development of the Port of Rye. I do not belittle the development of the Port of Rye. I would prefer the expansion of some of these ports, particularly when we are to develop trade with Europe, rather than have the creation of one channel tunnel to act as a bottleneck between the two bits of land. But I think in this sense the petitioners are trying to prove too much. I would refer hon. Members to Clause 12 of the Bill which appears to give reasonably solid assurances on the obligation to dredge and on what would happen if siltration were to occur.
One of the principal points raised by the Port of Rye Protection Society is the question of amenities. I do not think any hon. Member will accuse me of being careless about amenities. I have troubled this House on that subject on a number of occasions. I have a strong affection for Rye. The view of Rye Harbour is not only entrancing, but I find it very consoling as I play golf on the adjoining golf course when my golf is below par, which usually it is.
I think that the right attitude to strike in defending amenity such as this is not to say, "No, not at any price will we have a sluice or a barrage" but to make acceptance conditional upon the new development harmonising reasonably with the surroundings. I have looked into this, and my impression is that the authorities have not been altogether un-co-operative in discussing that aspect of their plan. It remains true that all the local authorities concerned, if not in favour of the plan, have expressed no opposition to it. I do not over-rate the value of that, but it is, I believe, the fact.
I have deliberately dealt with generalities, and I admit that I am vulnerable on matters of technical detail. It may be said that the real menace lies in such matters of technical detail. All I can say is that these questions were argued at some length, for seven days, I think, before the Select Committee. If such technical danger lies in the Bill, it has not been brushed under the carpet.
I think that the opponents of this measure have had and are still having a very good run. They have done a most valuable job because a great many matters have been raised which, otherwise, might not have been heard of. Their diligence and persistence has elicited some assurances and changes which otherwise would not have been forthcoming. On balance, however, I hope that they will not take hon. Members with them into the "No" Lobby tonight. Speaking as a landlubber here, with no nautical interests whatever in this business, I can only claim to put half the story, but I suggest that the land interests are strong. The stake held by the farmers is considerable, and I think it ought to prevail. In my view, the Bill should have a Second Reading.

8.41 p.m.

Mr. John Mackie: Like the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) I find it very difficult to come to a decision here because of the large and varied interests which are affected by the Bill—fisihing, yachting, amenities, housing and, of course, the interests which particularly concern me, the land interests. I do not know much about the other interests. I do not know much about fishing, I do not know anything about yachting, but I have been approached by a number of agriculturists in the district, and I wish to spend a minute or two discussing their side of the matter.
A number of farmers have petitioned against the scheme. I dare say that some of them are yachtsmen as well as farmers, and I wonder whether this may be clouding their judgment a little in favour of yachting and against the land interest. The total of £400,000, £250.000 plus another £150,000, is a large sum of money, but we must relate it to what it is to do. The hon. Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) tried to put the figure into proper perspective. Our consideration of whatever sums may be involved must depend on how many acres will be affected. Some of the people who have approached me have said that the benefit will spread to a much larger acreage even than that suggested by the river board. On this land enormous private drainage schemes have already been carried out. They have been very successful, and they will be successful provided that the water gets away. If the water from those private drainage schemes does not get away, all the money which has been spent privately and the grants which have been made for the purpose will be virtually wasted. This must be taken into account.
We must consider what type of farming is done by those who make the objections. A man who does a lot of grazing, who keeps sheep on the land, for instance, is not so much troubled by flooding. The arable farmer, on the other hand—I know some of the farmers here and I have been to the area—particularly if he is growing potatoes, a pertinent consideration at this time, knows that flooding is fatal. If potatoes are flooded at any time during their growing life, they are destroyed. The attitude of the 65 farmers who objected and of

the local farmers' union, with its almost overwhelming vote in favour, depends entirely upon the outlook which each has, whether the interest is grazing or arable farming.
I ask the House to consider how the Dutch would treat this matter. In Holland, enormous sums per acre are spent for this purpose. What is £7 10s. an acre or even £67 an acre if the land is made into good arable ground compared with what the Dutch are sometimes prepared to spend, even as much as £200 an acre?
We must relate this £400,000 to what it will do to the land and what it will produce for the future and not merely say that it is a very large sum. I am sure that if the scheme is worked out carefully it will benefit a large area of agricultural land and will have long-term results. In that case, I feel that I should support the Bill.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. A. P. Costain: Like my hon. Friends the Members for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) and Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine), I have the honour to represent a number of constituents who live in the area affected by the Bill. The particular area which I represent is part of the wide expanse of Romney Marsh, which has such a romantic and historic background. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford referred to this particularly from the fishing point of view. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) made a special point about the effect which the Bill had on freshwater fishing. I repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford said because the hon. Member for Rotherham was out of the Chamber when he said it. We have had a good deal of trouble and a large number of fish have been killed because flooding has taken place and there has been rotting of agricultural produce which has got into the rivers and subsequently into the Royal Military Canal. Unfortunately, I have no experience of freshwater fishing, but so many of my friends enjoy it that I am sure that it is an extremely good sport.
I have some experience as an engineer, and to that extent I declare my interest. However, my experience is in a very special branch of engineering.


I am also a yachtsman and vice-commodore of the House of Commons Yacht Club. It may be said that I should oppose the Bill because of the effect it might have on Rye harbour. However, I take the opposite view. I think that the effect of the engineering work will probably improve Rye harbour.
I have a number of inshore fishermen in my constituency, at Dungeness. I am friendly with most of them. I have had no direct approach about the effects of the Bill, but I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan). These men may not fully appreciate what is involved. I hope that the Bill will get a Second Reading, and should they have any fears in this respect I undertake to do my best to make representations to the river boards, which I have always found most helpful in these matters, to see whether anything further can be done to improve their lot.
I should now like to refer to the trouble which has taken place during flooding in my constituency. This has not happened, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) said, once in 200 years. I have had the honour to represent my constituency for only three years and I can recall two floods during that time. Let me quote a letter which I have received dated 9th November, 1960, from the Clerk to the Romney Marsh Rural District Council. As a result of a survey which he made of flooding, he said:
As a result of the recent heavy rains, large areas of agricultural land were waterlogged and farmers were unable to proceed with harvesting their potatoes, sugar beet and other root crops or to do any cultivation. There were also several instances of houses on low-lying ground being flooded. On the estate at Newchurch, which lies inland, we had to keep pumps going night and day to prevent water entering the houses. However, on the whole, the drainage system of the Marsh appears to have worked fairly well, the only apparent weakness being that with such heavy rainfall the surface water sewers become overloaded and the existing sluices are unable to get sufficient water away between tides. As a result of the height of the water in the main sewers, the water in the petty sewers and private ditches is unable to get away and there is considerable backing up. The remedy would appear to be the provision of further sluices.…

He concludes:
It is, of course, possible that the general position in the Marsh would have been worse if the period of heavy rainfall had happened to coincide with high tides. Fortunately, it did not.
As I see it, the whole purpose of the proposal is to deal with this state of affairs. The engineering proposals are to ensure that should the large tides from which we suffer in the Channel coincide with heavy rainfall, the tidal sweep does not go up the river and interfere with the storage of water. The proposals are simply that a sluice can be put down so that at certain times the high rising tide should be prevented from filling up the river. It is as if there were a barrage at Tower Bridge which allowed the stretch of river here to take the flood water from the Thames. It is as simple as that.
I cannot understand the worry of the fishermen or the yachtsmen. During the summer months, the barrage does not work at all. All that they want is an improved bank and improved river works. I say this with reserve, because I make no claim to be a hydraulic engineer. I merely happen to be a contractor who does a certain amount of hydraulic engineering work. It is, however, common sense that if the river board wants to make proposals to get the water away, it will not put forward proposals to silt it up. It would be against the board's interests. Its interest is to get the maximum reservoir to store the water prior to its being pushed out to sea. Therefore, why should the river board put forward proposals that would cause silting up, which would prevent the board from getting the very thing it wants?
In the same way, by having the sluice gate, if the sluice gate is open and the velocity of water is increased, the effect would surely be to wash the water away downstream, which would give the fishermen better access.

Mr. Callaghan: Does the hon. Member know from his Welsh experience that in the Bristol Channel, where we have the largest rise and fall in the world, we also have some of the worst silting in the world?

Mr. Costain: I do not pretend to have great Welsh experience. I know that the Bristol Channel has its own tidal bore and has a number of special features, but we are not thinking of a channel the length of the Bristol Channel. We are concerned merely with about a mile of river. The two cases are not parallel.
I call in aid the fact that during a time of heavy flooding, those of us who are familiar with Rye Harbour know that at certain times of the year a bar builds up at the bottom end and the river turns to the east, because the bar silts up. At a time of heavy flooding, this can be seen by aerial photographs. The swirl of the river and the extra water passing down the river breaks the bar and gives a channel straight out. Evidence put forward indicates the possibility of an improvement in this respect.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford has dealt with this matter extremely fairly, giving both sides of the picture, and I should like to associate myself with him. In Kent we are all extremely proud of the beauties of Rye, but I cannot think that there is anything in the scheme which would detract from them. The hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Mackie) spoke of Holland. I have had the opportunity of seeing a great deal of Holland. Some of the river works and sluices there keep the water at higher levels, but in that way add to and do not detract from the beauty of the area. I recall places around Amsterdam which are extremely attractive.
There is a good deal of unnecessary apprehension in Rye about the effect of the scheme on the beauties of Rye. This apprehension has been produced by a number of well-meaning people who are always worried about the effects of new engineering works. One hon. Member suggested that there were other ways in which £250,000 could be spent without opposition. I wonder whether that is so. From my experience I cannot think of anything which has been built without someone finding some jolly good reason why the money should not be spent.
I have contacted every person in my constituency who is likely to be affected and in only one case have I found strong objection. I must admit that it

came from a very powerful gentleman who, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford, sees things not grey, but black or white. He is a man of great ability at putting his point of view, and I admire him for it. He is able to say what he means to the Tomato Board and the Potato Board and other bodies, and I admire him for it, but it is possible that in his enthusiasm to do what he thinks right—and I take full cognizance of that—he has whipped up extraordinary but unnecessary opposition to the Bill.
I summarise what I have to say by saying that the Bill is necessary because the harbour works are required for the drainage of the whole area. There seems to have been some doubt about the acreage and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) wondered whether it was 40,000 acres. I refer him to the evidence of Mr. Taylor given on the first day, when in answer to Question 14 on page 31—
What is the acreage of these lands that are below the level of high water?"—
he said:
40,000 acres are below high tide level.
Any land below high tide level must be directly affected by the Bill, because all that land has to be drained by pumping into the River Rother. In fact, this could be called the River Rother Reservoir Bill, and whatever may be said about the Shirley Moor or the Walland Marsh, all the area of Romney Marsh below sea level must be directly affected and therefore improved by the Bill.
I can see no reason for opposition to the Bill except that of expense, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport made some comments about that. But I think that those comments have been adequately dealt with from both sides of the House. If hon. Members have any doubts, let them bear in mind that if something has to be done one day, if it is not done this year, it will probably cost more to do it next year, and more again the year after.
If the hon. Member for Southport is in doubt about this, if he goes to the Library and asks for a book on the history of Rye, he will see that Rye harbour started to silt up in 1600. There was an appeal to the then king who arranged that there should be a special collection


in every church and chapel of the country for money to clear the harbour. I suggest that such a collection would not bring in much today. In consequence, I do not think that anything is to be gained by delaying this Bill for three months, and I ask the House to approve it and allow my constituency to get over its flooding problem.

Mr. Percival: My hon Friend talked about 40,000 acres. This is one thing which I have been trying to discover in my researches. Can my hon. Friend tell the House what benefit these 40,000 acres will get?

Mr. Costain: I thought that I had dealt with that most adequately. I explained that the 40,000 acres were land below sea level, and I explained that the only way to get the water off was to pump it away, and to pump it into this reservoir to which I referred. What more does my hon. Friend want?

9.1 p.m.

Mr. James Callaghan: I make no comment about the drainage of the land, It seems to me that the promoters of the Bill have made out a good case for this, and clearly we all ought to be in favour of draining agricultural land so that farmers know where they are. If that is the case, I do not protest. I just do not know. Nor do I protest about this on amenity grounds.
I have one interest in the matter. For many years I have worked with the Federation of Inshore Fishermen. When I say worked with the Federation, I do not mean that it employs me. I mean that we are old friends. Its members helped me with the prevention of oil pollution, and I am delighted to help them now. I am sorry that they have not been to see the hon. Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine).

Mr. Godman Irvine: I regret that also.

Mr. Callaghan: I told them that I regret their not going to see the hon. Gentleman, and I think the answer, though an inadequate one, is that they knew that he was on the side of the Bill and therefore did not think that it was worth while going to see him. I assured them that all hon. Members have such open minds that they could well have

put their points to the hon. Gentleman. Anyway, they have circularised all hon. Members today. They represent 35,000 inshore fishermen, and are a levelheaded, sensible body of men whose chairman is from the county concerned.
Having listened to this debate, I think that we are entrusting substantial powers to a board whose interests are not those of the inshore fishermen. By its constitution, the Kent River Board's only interest is to get the land drained. It is interested in Rye harbour only because it wants to protect the surrounding land. But I have another interest. I want to protect the interests of the fishermen and make sure that they can continue their livelihood.
Having listened to this discussion, I wonder whether we are right in giving this power to a river board whose interests are so one-sided. I do not mean that the board will not exercise its powers in a judicial manner. I am sure that it will, but its interest is to get the land drained, and not to look after the livelihood of the fishermen.
The hon. Member for Rye said that the number of inshore fishing boats using this port has doubled during the last ten years. The figure used to be four, and it is now nine, although I think that the hon. Gentleman said that the figure was eight. This may not seem a large number, but to anyone who knows how inshore fishing has declined in recent years, it is a remarkable increase. The Federation employs between 40 and 50 men, and perhaps another 10 or a dozen are employed ashore. As far as I can see, every provision in the Bill is weighted against these men's livelihoods.
Where is the nearest port to Rye? If they cannot use the port because, for the purposes of the Bill, it is being used for other interests, I suppose that they will have to use the open beach at Hastings or Dungeness. That is a fairly severe thing to ask these men to bear. Otherwise they will have to move much further along the coast. I ask that more protection should be given to these men before the Bill is given a Second Reading.
They tell me that undertakings have been given them which have not been carried out. For example, I am told—and I speak subject to correction—that


they were promised a depth of water of 10 ft. at the Newlyn ordnance datum. In fact, it appears in the Bill as a depth of 7 ft. 6 ins. I do not suppose that the Minister can give us the answer, but somebody should be able to tell us. At any rate, this point should be cleared up before the Bill goes through. The fishermen say that they were promised an answer on this point but they were not given it, and that the Bill was suddenly published.
Another point that they put to me is that the Bill provides that the depth of water at Strand Quay, which they use at present, should be not less than 4 ft. That is all right for an existing boat of 25 ft., or perhaps even 35 ft., but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) said earlier, it may be that much larger boats will be built. If inshore fishing prospers, as I hope it will, there is no doubt that larger boats will be built, and I hope that some will be built in the port of Rye. If they are built they will require a greater depth of water. I should think that an 80-ft. boat would require a depth of 5 or 6 ft. But it is written in the Bill that the promoters must provide only 4 ft. at Strand Quay, which is where the fishermen have their gear and tackle at the moment. The Bill is clearly designed in the interests of the River Board and not in the interests of the men earning their livelihood in the harbour.
There is also the matter of the lock. I believe that the Bill provides that it shall be 70 ft. How will an 80-ft. boat get into a 70-ft. lock?

Mr. Godman Irvine: There is only one 50-ft. boat from Grimsby right round to Weymouth.

Mr. Callaghan: I was not aware of that, but I am willing to accept it. At any rate, if the inshore fishing Bill means anything we can surely assume that boats will become larger.

Mr. John Wells: No.

Mr. Callaghan: The inshore fishermen tell me that that is so. However, I do not want to make too much of that point.
I am not sure whether I really understand Clause 11, which deals with the operation of the sluice and the lock. Everybody will agree that the interest in

the operation of this sluice and lock may be very different if one is a farmer than if one is a fisherman. Clause 11 (1, b) provides that:
the sluice and the lock shall not be closed except on the incoming tide and when the water in the river is either at or above a level of 4 ft. above ordnance datum at Blackwall Bridge.…
That sounds all right until we examine subsection (3) which says:
After the completion of Works Nos. I to 6 the lock and the sluice may also be closed … to enable the Board to carry out works in or adjoining the river for the purposes of any of their functions …
Their functions are to drain the land and not to assist navigation for inshore fishermen.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. W. M. F. Vane): The river board is also the harbour authority. It is wrong to give the impression that it is only a drainage authority. It has a much wider interest.

Mr. Callaghan: If it has a much wider authority—I am glad to hear it—I am surprised that we have not heard more this evening about its interests in relation to fishing and the use of the harbour. The whole of the argument, surely, has been about the preservation of the amenities, the interests of the farmers and whether Rye is going to be flooded.
I accept that this is the constitution of the board, as the Minister said. But from what I know of the functions of river hoards—not necessarily this river board—I would say that they are much more concerned with drainage than as acting as harbour authorities. I put it to the Minister, who I am sure will carry out his job properly—he is responsible not only for agriculture but for fisheries as well that he has a duty to see that this Bill is drafted in such a way that the legitimate interests of the fishermen are protected.
It says in this Clause that not only can the lock be closed in order to carry out works but also in order to carry out
experiments as to the effect of closure on the flow of the river …
That is a drainage requirement. It is not a harbour authority requirement. The subsection states
… between the thirtieth day of September in any year and the following first day of April


on not more than forty days in the aggregate or such greater number of days as may be agreed between the Board and the county council …
The county council is not a harbour authority, and from what I know of the Kent County Council, or the Sussex County Council, I should not be surprised if there are one or two farmers among its members. The subsection continues:
or in default of agreement as may be determined by the Ministers …
The Ministers come into this and can act as referees and that provides a bit of protection. But to close the lock to fishermen for 40 days during the winter could be a considerable hardship to them. Anyone who knows anything about fishing will agree that for a fisherman not to be able to use his harbour or even to be locked in the harbour—although I am sure that they would be given warning and be let out of the harbour if possible—would be a hardship. But suppose it is not possible to let them out. It is likely, it could happen, that for either of these purposes, neither of which is concerned with the harbour, they could be Jacked out of the harbour for all these days.
The Minister has pointed out that Clause 10 provides that the public shall have a right of passage through the lock at all times free of charge. But I should like him to reconcile the provisions in Clause 10 (2) with those in Clause 11 (3), because the fishermen are under the impression—which has been conveyed to me only in the last half-hour—that the provisions in Clause 11 (3) override those in Clause 10 (2) and that they can be kept out of the harbour. If this is so, can they get in through the look even when the harbour is officially closed? I think that the fishermen are right and I should be glad to hear the views of the Minister on this matter.
I put forward these points only because, as I am sure the House will agree, they ought to be put forward. Whether the fishermen are right or wrong, they feel that they have been overridden by the board. They have met the promoters of the Bill only on three occasions, and they feel that the promoters have not paid sufficient attention to their representations, or the amount of attention which

might have been paid to the representations of others. I cannot be judge of it, but I can say that [that is the feeling of the fishermen. They certainly do not feel that all the things which were promised have been put into the Bill and so I put these points to the Minister. I hope that he will be able to give the fishermen some satisfaction.

9.13 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. W. M. F. Vane): May I now intervene briefly in the debate, not least because the responsibilities of my Minister have been mentioned more than once and I appreciate that this is a House of Commons matter entirely? I am all far the kind of vigilance which one hon. Member referred to earlier in the debate, and I hope that what I have to say may be taken as an attempt to be of some small help in relation to some, if not all, of the questions which have been raised this evening.
Neither the river board nor the Department is interested only in drainage. I made a note to make that point at an early stage in the debate. We have a much wider field of interest which includes not least fishery matters, both freshwater fisheries and sea fisheries. But I should like to return to that point a little later in what I have to say.
This scheme is a river board scheme, and this is a river board Bill. It is a peculiar scheme, not so much on account of its size—several hon. Members have spoken about the cost of carrying out work on this scale—but because of the need to come to Parliament for special enabling powers. River boards frequently plan and carry through bigger schemes than this under the general statutes. It is unusual, but none the less important, that this gives us the chance once in a way of discussing proposals of this sort in some detail.
I make the point that they are regularly considered on their merits without private legislation. Any proposal which may finally be put to my right hon. Friend under this Bill will be considered on its merits when he knows the details, in exactly the same way as any other big scheme which is prepared by a river board without the need for special legislation. Therefore, it would be wrong to suppose that any detailed


large scheme would automatically be carried out if this Bill completes its stages through Parliament.
The sort of merit which my right hon. Friend considers is the benefit which in the main is to agricultural land when one is considering land drainage schemes concerning thousands of acres; but there are other benefits concerning highways, buildings, village prevention of flooding schemes and so on. It would be impossible to say how many pounds per acre is needed, for one area may have a very different figure from another. There is also the question of engineering soundness to be borne in mind. That applies to harbour works in a composite scheme of this kind just as much as to the more straightforward drainage engineering.
There is the question of cost and always the question of priority between competing schemes for the funds available for land drainage which are not inconsiderable, but there are more claimants than there are funds to satisfy them. There are frequently also consultations about amenity, particularly where amenity considerations are important as they are in this case. So every big scheme has a long way to go, a very long way, from the time it is first thought out until the time any part of it is approved and carried out.
Far more often there is pressure on Ministers the other way in Adjournment debates because for one reason or another an hon. Member considers that we are not willing to give a high enough priority to a scheme affecting his constituency. It is quite unusual for us to be asked to check in detail a scheme such as this. Incidentally hon. Members may be interested to hear that recently the Exchequer contribution towards land drainage—which is a big service which I think most of us support whole-heartedly—is in the neighbourhood of £4 million per annum. That includes grants towards half a dozen schemes of the same magnitude as this.
It is true that approval was given to the Shirley Moor scheme some time ago. It has now been about half completed, and that was done in the knowledge that some work would be necessary lower down the river if full value was to be gained from that work and from other work in other parts of the same catchment area. It would be fair to say that

provisional approval was given to some form of sluice if full value was to be gained, not only from the Shirley Moor scheme but other areas where drainage would be necessary.
Provisional approval is given, quite apart from a Bill, to a river board in the early days of planning if it is considered that it is working on the sort of lines on which ultimately consent will be given to allow it to go ahead. Speaking in general terms, it may be said that this scheme is not far out of step with others. The ultimate benefit could be very much more than in Shirley Moor and Walland Marsh in particular.
Consideration and discussion has been going on for some years on the River Rother scheme, with the Ministry of Agriculture always on the side of simplicity and economy. There is no question of our being anxious to see large sums of money spent without ample justification. Hon. Members who have spoken about extravagance may be quite satisfied that we are fully aware of the need to ensure that all money is spent to give the maximum benefit, because if one is extravagant in one scheme, another scheme is cut out, because the total funds are not unlimited.
Some of the arguments by hon. Members on the engineering side were answered by other hon. Members who have greater engineering knowledge than I have. I think that hon. Members agree that many of the points raised were more for the Committee-type discussion than for this debate. On the other hand, there were one or two points made by several hon. Members to which the House would like me to refer, concerning fishing and navigation.
I have said that in this case the Kent River Board is also the harbour authority. I have seen a model of this sluice, and I understand that it is intended to cross the river roughly in the middle of the area where this small number of fishing boats are accustomed to moor. There are, therefore, traditional moorings both inside and outside the sluice. It is also, I believe, the river board's intention to ensure that where any moorings are disturbed, at least equal if not better, facilities will be provided. I am not a harbour engineer nor have I the experience of the hon. Member for


Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) on navigation, but I should not be surprised if at the end of the day, when works of this sort are completed—I am not necessarily referring to the detail—the facilities in the harbour were more up to date than I gather are the pretty simple installations available today.

Mr. Callaghan: I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. Given proper precautions and reasonable safeguards for the fishermen, they may well end better than they started, but they must have these precautions.

Mr. Vane: I entirely agree. It is no good our just hoping and then, at the end of the day, discovering that something has not been done which should have been done. The numbers of these people are not great, but that does not mean that they do not deserve our full consideration. From what I am told, it seems unlikely that there will be a large increase in numbers or in the size of the boats likely to use this harbour. There are moorings both below and above the line where a sluice—no one has agreed the final details of any particular sluice—could be built if the Bill were passed. I am told that the lock is of ample size to accommodate any vessel likely to require to use it, and that is confirmed by some hon. Members.
I know that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East will forgive me if I cannot answer all his questions about feet and inches. They are on the record and we will look into them, as I am sure the river board will look into them, too, because as he made his representations it was clear that from the fishermen's point of view these are not trivial points. These are genuine fears which should be met.
Mention was made of days when the sluice may be closed and the lock closed, too. I understand that the governing sentence is in Clause 10, by which the public
have a right of passage through the lock at all times free of charge
and that the provisos in Clause 11 were designed to enable the board to carry out works in the area adjoining the river for the purposes of any of their functions

—and that includes experiments, repairs and any emergency. The hon. Member pointed out that if advantage were regularly taken of the figure of 40 days without good reason it would be a great disservice to fishermen, even though they might be able to moor outside. The hon. Gentleman also pointed out that my right hon. Friend comes into the operation of these provisos. I can only say now that I will look into that and ensure that justice is at least done in the sense that the House of Commons would approve.
The Bill has already been considered in general terms and in detail before a Select Committee of another place. I should have thought that after this debate not only the promoters of the Bill but also those who object to it would consider that the right thing to do in accordance with our traditions would be to give it a Second Reading tonight and send it to a Select Committee of this House where the points that have been raised tonight and other points can be considered in greater detail and at greater length and accorded more justice than is possible here on the Floor of the House. If that is the decision of the House, I would give an assurance that we for our part will take account of what hon. Members have said and I am sure that the river board will do the same.

9.26 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Peart: The Joint Parliamentary Secretary said that this is a somewhat peculiar Bill. I agree with him about that. I would much prefer a river board to operate under the general Statutes. Indeed, not long ago we considered a major drainage Bill in this House.

Mr. Vane: The hon. Gentleman will agree that it is not a question of choice, of the river board deciding to move in this way. It could not do a scheme of this sort under the general Statutes, for various reasons.

Mr. Peart: I accept that. I was merely repeating what the hon. Gentleman said. I would have preferred a river board to operate under the general legislation. In that sense the Bill is a peculiar Measure, to use the Parliamentary Secretary's words. I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman say that the


Minister when discussing this will be guided by simplicity and economy, as always. I can only assume that the Ministry is guided when it is dealing with matters of major importance in agriculture by the doctrine of extravagance and complexity. I do not think that the doctrine of economy is pursued by this Government.
However, the Parliamentary Secretary said that he would carefully consider the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan). I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not merely look at a model but will, in view of what has been said this evening, go with his officials down to Rye and carefully consider some of the difficulties which face the inshore fishermen. I know Rye, although I have not been there since the Bill was produced.
We have had a conflict of opinion this evening. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) has not met the inshore fishermen who are affected. We are not arguing about who is to blame. All we know is that consultation has not taken place. I trust that the Minister will bear in mind the very forceful argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East. The inshore fishermen have a case. We expect that their interests will be safeguarded. They may well be.

Mr. Costain: I do not think that I made it clear in my speech that the shutting of the harbour will at no time stop the fishermen getting in, except in dire emergency. It is simply the sluice gates which will be shut.

Mr. Peart: Clause 11 has been referred to. I only ask that this point will be considered. In the end the inshore fishermen may well benefit. Nevertheless, there are still fears. I have mentioned the correspondence that we have received today from a representative of the Federation of English and Welsh Inshore Fishermen. I interrupted the speech of the hon. Member for Rye to say that on 12th April the Sussex Sea Fisheries Committee apparently passed a resolution opposing the Bill, although the promoters of the Bill give the impression in their statement that the Committee more or less supports the Bill. That is why we ask that the Bill will be considered carefully when it goes to a

Select Committee of this House. It is true that it has appeared before a Select Committee of another place, but here we are dealing with Commons procedure. It is the intention that if the Bill is approved it shall go before a Select Committee of this House.
I feel that so far there has not been enough discussion about the Bill and that the interests concerned have not been fully consulted. I think that the case of the inshore fishermen is very formidable and one that must be considered. I hope that the Minister's assurance will be considered and that, whatever the decision of the House this evening, this matter will be carefully considered by the Select Committee and by the promoters.
Even although, as my hon. Friend has said, only a few fishermen are affected, they are an important body. We have discussed the sea fish industry on another Bill and we have been anxious in this House to protect the inshore fishermen who not only fish but man our lifeboats and provide a very important service. I am sure that in Rye the inshore fishermen who are affected are very important citizens, and their case should be considered.
On the agricultural side, there is a conflict of interest. The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) indicated that several agricultural interests in his own constituency support the Bill. On the other hand, I am informed that there are other agricultural interests which have petitioned against the Bill and that there is a conflict of evidence. This is a matter which the Committee must consider objectively. There will be careful scrutiny.
I trust that the Minister will carefully consider this matter because this is only an enabling Bill and in the end the Government will have to make a decision. As revealed by the promoters of the Bill, this will be part only of a major scheme, and in their own document, which they have submitted to the House, they state that a major scheme will be pursued at a later period. A lot of money will be devoted to the project, the Government will have to accept responsibility and their engineering and other technical personnel will have to advise them.
The Government will have to take this matter very seriously, because it is not just a matter for the board. The Government's own engineers will carry out a survey and that the Minister will himself look at what is to be done in the area. I know that it is asking a lot for a Minister who works hard and has his constituency in another part of the country, but I hope that he will go to see what is proposed there and consult the interests concerned before he finally makes his decision.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. John Wells: I shall be very brief but I think that we have to get this matter into perspective. We have all had this morning a document from the Federation of Inshore Fishermen which begins by stating that large quantities of fish are landed at Rye. That is absolute nonsense. Contrasted with all the other ports in this area, Rye is by far the smallest. The total landings of fish are negligible; last year the total was under £13,500.

Mr. Peart: That is a lot of money for the people who are employed. It is a very bad argument.

Mr. Wells: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue because I want to be brief. The other ports in the area are very much bigger. The Federation which has written to us largely represents other fishing ports. The board has been in the closest consultation with the actual fishermen concerned as opposed to the gentleman called Mr. Steel who comes from somewhere else. The fishermen of this port have been well and closely consulted and they are well-satisfied. I have every assurance of that.
Secondly, I am assured that the catchment authority, now the river board, in its capacity as harbour authority, has improved the harbour very considerably. The lock gate will never be closed, except in an emergency or because it is jammed. It will never be closed to prevent the ingress and egress of vessels, so that all this fishery argument in regard to the local people is hot air from a federation from another part of the country——

Mr. Callaghan: rose—

Mr. Wells: No, I will not give way. I am trying to be very brief, and I have refrained from interrupting other hon. Members.
I declare an interest when I turn to the yachting interests——

Mr. Callaghan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has referred to the reputation of the president of the inshore fishing industry, who has no power to defend himself here. I put it to you, Sir, that, in accordance with the normal practice and custom of this House, the hon. Member should allow me to intervene on behalf of a gentleman whose reputation has been attacked—I think quite unjustifiably.

Mr. Speaker: That may be very laudable, but it does not become a point of order.

Mr. Callaghan: I only want to say that I have known this gentleman for 10 years, and have always found him extremely moderate in his statements. He comes from East Sussex, not from another part of the world. He is on the Sussex Sea Fisheries Board. I think that the hon. Member should be careful before using the House to make an unjustifiable attack on the gentleman's reputation.

Mr. Wells: I do not seek to attack the gentleman's reputation. I only say that the local fishermen are satisfied, which makes it seem to be part and parcel of an attack on the Bill coming, from people remote from the immediate area, and I deplore it. I have no desire to attack this gentleman personally, but I wish to stress that the local people are satisfied.
The yachting interests must be seen in perspective. The harbour board, which is the river board, has improved the harbour, and has done excellent work. I understand that its income from yachtsmen is only about £200 a year, and the yachting fraternity, of which I am one, should not complain when it is offered these amenities. I therefore hope that the House will realise that much of the objection emanating from those two interests is not strictly in the interests of the immediately local people concerned.
As to the agricultural interests, I have the privilege of attending the county executive of the Kent Farmers' Union, most of whose members, as far as I know, wholeheartedly support the agricultural proposition. As the yachtsmen, the fishermen and the farmers are all satisfied, I trust that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

Mr. Percival: In view of my hon. Friend's assurances of further detailed examination and investigation, and in the hope and expectation that all that has been said tonight will receive the careful consideration of the Committee, and in the hope that, even at that late stage, we may hear what benefit will accrue to the 20,000 acres, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed.

SCOTLAND (ELECTRICITY CHARGES)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Whitelaw.]

9.40 p.m.

Mr. Bruce Millan: The question I wish to raise tonight is the recent increase in electricity tariffs by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and, in particular, the circumstances leading up to the increase and the Government's responsibility in the matter. The increase, which was announced about two months ago, represents about 10 to 11 per cent. on electricity tariffs and has given rise to a considerable amount of public concern and controversy.
The Government's decision to force the, Board to increase its prices—because that is exactly what has happened—flows from the Government's new policy contained in Cmnd. Paper 1337 concerning the financial and economic obligations of the nationalised industries to raise considerably more in the future than in the past of the amount of money they require for their own capital development. There are a number of other things in the White Paper, but the

one to which I have referred is the significant point with which we are concerned tonight.
I am not going to argue the general case for or against the Government's new policy, because there could be circumstances in which it might be desirable that the nationalised industries should raise more of their capital from their own resources and less by means of borrowing. The important point in general criticism of what the Government have done is that their new policy means—when it comes down to the fundamental facts of the situation—that the nationalised industries must raise their prices. This is not the kind of change of policy that can be accommodated by means of increasing efficiency or any other internal arrangements that the nationalised industries can make. It is the sort of sudden change of policy that because it is so comprehensive, can be accommodated only by increased prices.
We are, after all, still faced with the Government trying to impose some sort of incomes policy with wages and salary restraint. It was when this policy began to come into effect in the winter months that the Government stated that any wage or salary increases were, if they had to take place, not to go beyond 2½ per cent. If that is still the Government's policy, they have a responsibility to see that factors entering into the cost of living—which, in one way or another, are under their control—should not also be allowed to rise.
It is precisely in those circumstances that the Government have been forcing price increases on the nationalised industries, not just of 2½ per cent. but, in the case of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, 10 to 11 per cent. The same has happened to the South of Scotland Electricity Board. The same sort of thing, although there is a different Ministerial responsibility involved, has happened to gas prices in Scotland, in addition to changes in coal prices. When considering all these things—electricity in both the north and south, gas and coal, the changes made and the price increases—it is obvious that the Government have imposed a considerable influence on the cost of living.
My first criticism, whatever merit there may have been for the Government's policy considered in the abstract, is that it has had a serious effect on the cost of living. This brings me to my second criticism, which applies to the Secretary of State for Scotland. It has been extremely difficult for hon. Members to obtain information about exactly what the Government have been doing with regard to the nationalised boards. The Minister of Power, for the English electricity boards and the gas industry, gave Parliamentary Answers showing what the financial targets over the next few years were to be for these boards, there having been discussions with the industries concerned.
There was no similar statement on the part of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Had I not tabled some Questions on the subject the right hon. Gentleman would have made no statement at all. The information had to be dragged out of him and, in reality, we still have not got this information. I hope that we shall get it tonight and we shall know exactly what these financial targets are, not just in general terms but in terms of money and in terms of the kind of surpluses which the Hydro-Electric Board is to be expected to earn over, say, the next five years. These targets have been fixed for the Hydro-Electric Board as they have been fixed for the South of Scotland Electricity Board and the various gas boards, and I think we are entitled to know what the targets are.
The Secretary of State has never considered it to be part of his duty to give that information to the House. There is a special responsibility on him to do this because these price increases naturally raise public resentment, and it is important that the Secretary of State should observe his proper public responsibilities for having forced the boards to make these price increases. So far we have had from the Secretary of State what I can only describe as an attempt to dodge his responsibility in this respect.
When we come to deal with the Hydro-Electric Board proper there are certain important special considerations which pertain to the Hydro-Electric Board which do not pertain to any other of the nationalised boards, either the South of Scotland Electricity Board or

any of the electricity boards in Scotland or any of the gas boards in any part of the country. These are certain financial considerations that we ought to keep in mind. There is the tremendous burden of capital expenditure which the Hydro-Electric Board is bound to have to bear, because it is in the nature of the operation that there should be large capital expenditure and then as the schemes come into operation only very small running and maintenance expenditure.
Certainly the Government have fixed the financial targets for the Hydro-Electric Board, although they are different from the way in which they have been fixed for the South of Scotland Electricity Board. In the latter case it is based on a percentage return of the capital employed. In the case of the Hydro-Electric Board that formula has not been applied. But of course, the Government having admitted that the formula is not appropriate, they have admitted in part that there is a case for treating the Hydro-Electric Board as something separate and distinct and different from the South of Scotland Electricity Board or any other electricity board.
There is another financial point that I ought to mention. The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board in 1961 made a profit of £1¾ million. I would consider that to be a fairly substantial profit and not by any means a poor performance. Incidentally, I think that financial surplus is the largest that the Hydro-Electric Board has ever had, but perhaps the Under-Secretary will either confirm or deny it. It makes it all the more remarkable and inappropriate that that financial result having been obtained in 1961, the Government should at this time impose this further increase in prices.
These financial considerations are much less important than the social and economic considerations that one would expect the Government to have in mind with regard to hydro-electric generation. I am not going through all the arguments that we have had on hydroelectric generation, the circumstances in which the Hydro-Electric Board was established and in which it has operated since then, but it is worth reminding the House once again that the Hydro-Electric Board has special social responsibilities which no other board has.


They are described on page x of the last Annual Report and Accounts of the Board as follows:
In addition, the Board were directed, so far as their powers and duties permitted, to collaborate in carrying out any measures for social improvement and economic development in the North of Scotland.
By general admission, the Board has done this kind of work extremely well and done it, moreover, without any sort of Government subsidy. By general consent, the Board has an excellent record financially and in every other way since its establishment.
The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board presents one of the few hopeful signs in the Highland scene. Looking at the whole picture of Highland development and what has been happening not just in the last 10 years but for generations, one finds very few very hopeful elements, but the Hydro-Electric Board is one really hopeful element, and, what is more, it is recognised as such by the people of the Highlands themselves. They are very jealous of the rights, duties and privileges of the Board and they are concerned to protect it from attack from any quarter.
The people of the Highlands have had a good deal to be concerned about during the last two years or so. There was the inspired campaign of "Aims of Industry" and other organisations which had previously never shown any interest in Highland development which led to the establishment of the Mackenzie Committee to consider the whole question of hydro-electric development and its possible future. Whatever the merits or demerits of having an inquiry, the circumstances in which that inquiry was set on foot were most inappropriate and inopportune from the point of view of persuading the people of the Highlands that the Government were really concerned to protect and extend the work the Board was doing.
Many people in the Highlands felt that this was just the first part of a campaign to get rid of the Hydro-Electric Board altogether. The Secretary of State has given very little assurance that this is not so. He said that the Mackenzie Committee could recommend, because its terms of reference were sufficiently wide, the abolition of the Hydro-Electric Board. I hope very much that it will do nothing so foolish.
I mention the matter because the whole sorry story of the last two or three years—the treatment of the "Aims of Industry" campaign, the weakening of the resolve of the Secretary of State to resist it, the setting up of the Mackenzie Committee, the way that the Secretary of State dealt with the Glen Nevis scheme and the decision to postpone any final conclusions on it until the Mackenzie Committee had reported—has given no confidence whatever to the people of the Highlands that the Government are really concerned to protect the Hydro-Electric Board and to extend Highland development.
This latest action on the part of the Government is looked upon by many people in the Highlands as another piece in the pattern and they are very concerned about it. One would expect consumers to be concerned about a price increase. Naturally, no one likes a price increase in the North of Scotland or anywhere else. It is natural that consumers should react against it. It may be said that this was to be expected and there is nothing remarkable about it, but there are some remarkable features about the latest price increase which are worth putting on record.
In the first place, the Board itself did not want to raise its prices. In correspondence in the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald and elsewhere, there has been a tendency on the part of consumers to place entire responsibility for rising electricity prices on the shoulders of the Hydro-Electric Board. It is absolutely essential to make clear that the Board did not want to increase its prices but was coerced into doing so by the Government. I do not think that this fact is disputed. It comes out in the correspondence between the North of Scotland Electricity Consultative Council and the Secretary of State. It is not denied by the Secretary of State in that correspondence that the Board did not want to increase its prices but was forced to do so by the pressure of the Government.
The other remarkable thing is the very strong line taken by the Electricity Consultative Council about this price increase. It wrote to the Secretary of State on 19th April and subsequently met him and expressed its opposition in the strongest possible terms. What is remarkable is that this is the only occasion


in, I think, the 14 years' existence of this Council that it has protested about a price increase. On other occasions, however unhappy it may have been about the price increase, it has accepted the Board's explanation and the inevitability of the increase. On this occasion, however, it protested in most strong and vigorous terms because it did not believe that the circumstances warranted a price increase.
The Council met the Secretary of State, and he gave it very little encouragement. The interesting thing about the Secretary of State's reply to the Council comes near the end of it. This is what he wrote on 17th May to Lord Macdonald:
I have explained the importance of ensuring that the finances of all the nationalised industries should be put on a sound basis; and you will appreciate that the Hydro Board cannot be an exception.
The Board is already an exception in many different ways. I have pointed out that it has certain social and economic obligations which are well beyond those of any other electricity board. These obligations involve it in the expenditure of large sums of money, and it is extremely difficult for the Board to make ends meet. Therefore, it is not the case that the Board has not exceptional features which made it desirable that it should be treated exceptionally. It has these exceptional features. It is one of the few potential and actual sources of Highland development. The Government as well as the Opposition attach a great deal of importance to the necessity for Highland development, for attracting industry and for arresting depopulation, and so on. There are, therefore, these special obligations placed on the Board and these special circumstances.
The case that I want to make—and since we have extra time, I hope that some of my hon. Friends, if they catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, will be able to add to it—is that the Board has these special features and should be specially treated. The Government should be condemned for the action which they have taken. I repeat that it is extremely important for the people of the Highlands, for people in Scotland generally, for the consumers affected and all others concerned about what has happened to electricity prices to know that the responsi-

bility for this action is not on a nationalised board.
This is not a case of a nationalised industry, through incompetence or inefficiency or a general "couldn't care less" attitude to the consumers, imposing an unjustified price increase. This is a case of a reluctant board being forced to impose price increases because of the direct policy of the Government which we criticise in the strongest terms as to its timing and particularly as to its effect on this very special board with its very special responsibilities and in view of the very fine work which it has done since its inception.

9.59 p.m

Mr. A. Woodburn: I reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) has so ably said. I do not want to go over the financial ground because my hon. Friend has been very expert in his knowledge of the Hydro-Electric Board's finances and I am sure that what he has said will have been noted by the Minister. My hon. Friend mentioned the Mackenzie Committee. I agree entirely with him that the circumstances under which that Committee was appointed were extremely unfortunate. A group of people who seemed to be more connected with industry and the beer trade in England formed themselves, curiously enough, into an electricity committee and for some——

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Whitelaw.]

Mr. Woodburn: For some curious reason, that group of people was accepted by the Government as a kind of expert body on electricity costs. So far as I know, none of the people who were at the initiation of the Committee had any connection with electricity or with industry in Scotland and yet those people were given the credit very largely of being responsible for the appointment of the Mackenzie Committee. The connection between this and what my hon. Friend has said is that the setting up of the Mackenzie Committee created a


feeling of great uncertainty in the development of the hydro-electric schemes.
I have had a lot of connection with the hydro-electric schemes from the very beginning and was present at the inception of the scheme in the House. It has been subjected to great opposition from vested interests from the start. Tom Johnston certainly carried it through the House without opposition, but that was largely because he did a great deal of hard work to convince all the people who were responsible that it was necessary.
The Board was formed and worked in an atmosphere of economy that has never been equalled by any board established by this House. Tom Johnston would not allow a penny to be spent that did not need to be spent. I should be surprised if the same principle applied in any other electricity board.
The Mackenzie Committee has been appointed. What worries people is that that is about the last we have heard of it. When will it report? When a Minister appoints a committee, he usually has two reasons. It is not usually because he does not know anything about the subject. The chances are that the Secretary of State and his Department knew all that was to be known about the Hydro-Electric Board, its virtues and its deficiences, before the Mackenzie Committee was heard of. It may be that the Secretary of State appointed the Committee to defend himself against this so-called electricity committee in Scotland, or it may be that he appointed the Committee to back him up in doing something to the Hydro-Electric Board. This is what causes the uncertainty.
If a body is to carry on an industry or a great enterprise, it must know what it is doing and where it is going. If it is held up and told "You may be out of existence in two or three years' time. This may be the last scheme which you will be permitted to carry out", uncertainty is caused and the uncertainty and lack of planning lead to extra expenditure.
It would be a good idea if tonight the Minister could give us an idea about what is happening concerning the Hydro-Electric Board. Will the Mackenzie Committee report? I understand that if it tried to digest all the evidence which

has been put before it, it would be busy for the next ten or twelve years. I doubt whether anybody is capable of digesting all the information which has been put before the Committee. We are entitled to know the Minister's intentions. Does he intend that the Mackenzie Committee will report in the near future or has he any knowledge that it will do so? Does he agree that when the Committee reports, certainty should be given to the Hydro-Electric Board in the carrying out of its activities?
I agree with my 'hon. Friend the Member for Craigton. The duty of the Hydro-Electric Board is something much more than that of a mere electricity undertaking. The Secretary of State is entitled to be asked to protect it against the vested interests who have been trying to destroy it ever since it started. When the Board was attacked in this House, the late Sir James Henderson-Stewart did a valiant job in giving the facts. It is curious that he was able to give all the facts and to show the justification for the board, whereas since new Ministers have come in there seems to be undue timidity in standing up for the board, for which they are responsible.
One of the criticisms is that the Board is trying to produce electricity which should be produced by coal. It should be explained that that is nonsense. The amount of electricity required in Scotland and the most economical way of producing it for each different circumstance are calculations which are most carefully balanced by the Hydro-Electric Board and the other electricity boards. The Hydro-Electric Board produces electricity for certain peak hours in the most economical way possible. It could not be produced by coal in the same way.
If he has time, I hope that the Under-Secretary will say something about the pump storage schemes which are a very important part of the future. I understand that the economics of such a scheme are not now so urgent and that electricity is now produced so scientifically that it may not be economical to go far with pump storage at the moment. But I also understand that in the long run it will be of tremendous importance to Scotland. I should also like him to


say something about the utilisation of electricity produced from atomic energy.
Other hon. Members would like to speak and this is only a short debate, but I should like the Minister to be able to reply to those questions.

10.6 p.m.

Mr. William Ross: We are here dealing with an institution which is highly respected and which is angry about its treatment by the Government, but not one Scottish Conservative Member is present on the back benches opposite—not one Scottish Tory from the Highland areas. The whip is cracked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the cost of electricity in the Highlands rises. The consultative committee protests, but the Secretary of State for Scotland brushes the matter aside.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) is to be congratulated not only on selecting this subject, but on the way in which he has presented the difficulties of the Hydro-Electric Board. When the Secretary of State excuses this increase by saying that the same sort of thing is happening elsewhere, he completely misses the unique qualities of the Hydro-Electric Board. This electricity authority covers one quarter of the land area of Britain, but only about 2¼ per cent, of the population. It covers about 22,000 square miles of rough and unpopulated country, and yet last year it was able to wipe off a revenue deficiency of about £500,000 and put another £900,000 to reserve and show itself capable of running its own affairs fairly well. It does not get a penny of subsidy from anywhere. It finances its capital development by stock and latterly by loan from the Government, and it pays interest on those loans at 6¼ to 6½ per cent. Anyone who wishes to see the truth of that need turn only to the back pages and appendices of the Board's reports. Such is the profit it makes after paying interest and redemption charges.
This is a Board which has shown itself capable of running its own business, a business which is more than just electricity. It has to run fishery activities and build roads which it hands over to the trunk road authority. It has special industrial and social responsibilities in the Highlands. It was a fight

to get those responsibilities and it will be a fight to maintain them.
There are few electricity authorities in this country which have merited what the Electricity Consultative Council for the North of Scotland District said about this Board. The Council, whose members form a cross-section of the community, felt bound
to place on record their admiration of the manner in which the Board have carried out their gigantic task; their appreciation of the Board's many valuable contributions to the social and economic development of the Highlands and the impartial and friendly atmosphere in regard to electricity supplies generally which has been created by the Board and their staff throughout the 22,000 square miles of Scotland for which they are responsible.
From the Council's intimate knowledge of the special and very difficult conditions peculiar to that area, the Council declare unanimously their conviction that the continuance of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board as a separate body is of vital importance to the future welfare of the Highlands and express the hope that nothing will be done to endanger the Board's independent status.
This arose out of the setting up of the Mackenzie Committee. This Council represents the customers, and that is what it said, but there is a double attack on the independent status of the Board. The other attacker is not the Secretary of State for Scotland, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
When we examine what the Board has been able to do in the last ten years, probably the most disappointing part of it is the fact that industrial consumption has only doubled, compared with the great strides which have been made in domestic, commercial and other use. What chance have we of getting industries into the Highland areas where there are not only difficulties of transport, but where there is now to be an increase in the cost of electricity? This is what the Government must appreciate. The things that were behind the setting up of the Board are the things which the Government should have had in mind when they directed it to raise its tariffs. The Board has sufficient troubles of its own in relation to increased costs, particularly in relation to the increased cost of borrowing money, without being directed to raise the price of electricity which will affect the people in the Highlands and the prospects of attracting new industries and improving tourism.
The Government ought to wake up. Why do not the people who call themselves Scotsman and who sit on the benches opposite assert all their courage and strength to stop the Board being forced to raise its prices? It is all very well for the Chairman of the Tory Party in Scotland to sit there smiling. He was not smiling when the result of the West Lothian by-election became known. It is little wonder that the Tory Party is losing its deposits in Scotland. It is little wonder also that the Liberal Party, which is not represented here tonight, is also losing support. The people in Scotland are sick and fed up with this weak, compliant attitude. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer cracks the whip because of something that has happened in the Midlands and elsewhere, the poor people of Scotland are made to suffer. When will the Government wake up? When will the Scottish Members of the Government get off their knees and proclaim themselves as Scots?

10.14 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. R. Brooman-White): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow. Craigton (Mr. Millan) for giving me the opportunity to explain rather more fully than was possible at Question Time the reasons why my right hon. Friend was unable to accept the representations made to him by the Electricity Consultative Council for the North of Scotland District against the various tariff increases which have been introduced by the Board.
To follow the hon. Gentleman briefly over the background—because he raised the question of the general financial arrangements—on 30th May, in reply to a number of question my right hon. Friend said that pending the Mackenzie Report the Board had agreed
to apply such tariff changes as will produce a percentage increase in income derived from its own consumers similar to that which is to be achieved by the South of Scotland Electricity Board."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th May, 1962; Vol. 660, c. 1356.]
A number of references have been made during the debate to the report of the Mackenzie Committee. As hon. Members know, the Committee is examining the general arrangements for generating and distributing electricity in Scotland.

My right hon. Friend expects to receive the report of the Committee next month, and we hope that it will be ready for publication in the autumn at the latest.
Leaving aside the future position in relation to the Mackenzie Committee report, the White Paper on the Financial and Economic Obligations of the Nationalised Industries said, in brief, that the Government had decided that in order to ensure the best use of our capital resources all the nationalised industries must be put on a sound economic basis, and stated that up to now the return on capital employed in them had been unduly low, because their prices had been uneconomically low. It stated that this distortion had been damaging to the economy as a whole——

Mr. E. G. Willis: Really!

Mr. Brooman-White: This is to some extent in reply to the hon. Member for Craigton. It said that this distortion had been damaging to the economy as a whole and must result also in higher taxation or in greater borrowing by the Exchequer. Each of the nationalised hoards was therefore being given a financial objective ensuring an adequate return on its capital, and each board's target has been agreed in accordance with the principles set out in the White Paper.
The North Board was extremely concerned about the requirements to be put upon it on this basis, but after the reasons for the policy had been explained to it on the lines that I have just given, it agreed to its financial objective being fixed in the way that I have described, by an increase in the revenue raised from consumers in its area.

Mr. Willis: It had to agree. It had no choice.

Mr. Brooman-White: The Board first objected, but accepted the necessity for the proposal when the matter was explained to it. The Consultative Council, on the other hand, was unable to accept the tariff increases submitted to it by the Board and, at its request, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State met a deputation from the Council in Inverness on 11th May. We understand its concern and the general concern felt in the area. I will try to cover, in the


rest of my speech, the points it raised, which have been emphasised and expanded by hon. Members tonight.
The hon. Member for Craigton and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) stressed the point that an increase in tariffs at the present time was inappropriate, having regard to the profits made by the Board last year. Without wishing to detract in any way from the Board's general performance, to which we all pay tribute, it is true to say that the heavy rainfall of last year gave the Board so much water that it was able to return a bumper profit, following a number of rather lean years when the weather was dryer than the Highlands normally get. The question of the Board's financial target, however, is something which must be considered over a number of years, and it would be wrong to allow our judgment of what is necessary to be affected by the lucky chance—lucky in this context—of heavy rain last year. We had, therefore, to consider what was likely to happen if the average amount of water available to the Board over the next five years was more nearly normal.
A second point, to which the hon. Member for Craigton also referred, and which all hon. Members Who have spoken tonight have stressed—and with which we entirely agree—was that the Board could not be compared reasonably with other nationalised electricity undertakings because its powers recognised the special problems which it had to meet in providing supplies to the remote areas and islands of the North of Scotland. We have taken account of this.
In the electricity supply industry in England and Wales and in the South of Scotland an average gross yield of 12½ per cent. of the average net assets employed is to be achieved. This money is not in the nature of a profit to be pocketed by the Government, or a surplus available for distribution in other ways; it is a contribution from revenue to the funds required to finance the developments which the boards must undertake if consumers' needs are to be met.
In setting the targets for Scotland the different circumstances of the Hydro-Electric Board are recognised, and

instead of applying a percentage to the Board's net assets, which, because of the cost of hydro-electricity schemes, are high relative to those of the other boards, the Hydro-Electric board has been asked to revise its tariff structure so as to produce only a percentage increase of the income derived from consumers in its own area similar to that to be achieved by the South of Scotland Electricity Board.
What, in effect, has happened is this. Let me make the point again in other words. We were concerned to ensure that no change was made which would cause a greater increase in price in the Highlands than elsewhere. Other electricity boards have adjusted their prices to produce a better return in relation to the capital employed in their undertakings. But the capital employed in the Highlands is proportionately much greater. So the Board has really been allowed to leave that out of account. What it has been asked to do is to see that its revenue is increased by a percentage similar to the increase taking place in the South of Scotland Board's area, even though this will produce a lower return on its capital than in the case of any other electricity board.
Accordingly, the Board's tariffs have been increased to produce about 10 per cent. more income but this leaves the relationship between its prices and those in other areas broadly unchanged.

Mr. Millan: May we have the financial target in money terms? We have had that for every other electricity board, but we still have not got it in this case. I have complained about that. When are we to get that information?

Mr. Brooman-White: I am afraid that I cannot give it this evening. I will see what more can be done to work it out.
It has been suggested that certain sections of the Board's consumers have been required to carry an unfair proportion of the increase as between one consumer and another. I must make it clear to the House that all we have asked the Board to do is to increase its income from sales of electricity to consumers in its own area by 10 per cent. How the tariff is adjusted to bring in this amount, and how the burden is


allocated between the various classes of consumers, is a matter entirely for the Board, and my right hon. Friend has no authority to intervene.

Mr. Woodburn: Can the Minister explain what happens to the electricity which is exported to the south of Scotland? Is the extra price charged?

Mr. Brooman-White: have stressed throughout what I have been saying that the increases are related to consumers in the Board's own area. If I have time at the end of my speech, I will develop that rather complicated point. But this happens within the area of the Board on the same basis as other boards act and deal with consumers in their areas. There are sales across the boundaries of the Board's district.
To come to another point, what has been called the social and economic side of the question, it has been said that the increased charges might aggravate the problem of depopulation, and be detrimental to agriculture and to the efforts of the Board to attract new industries to its district. An increase of the kind proposed which preserves the relative position of the Hydro-Electric Board's area does not introduce any new factor affecting depopulation, or the attraction of new industry. The relative position is largely unchanged. All the boards do not alter the prices at exactly the same time, but I might mention that every other electricity board in Great Britain has increased its tariffs generally since the last increase by the Hydro-Electric Board in 1959.
We appreciate the difficulties of the farmers and realise that last winter was a particularly difficult one for many farmers and crofters. But that is one of the hazards of farming and it would be quite improper to use the electricity tariff in order to provide a hidden subsidy to help an industry to meet a temporary setback arising out of one bad season.
On the question of the attraction of industry which was stressed particularly by the hon. Member for Craigton and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock it has been argued that, because of the difficulty caused by remoteness, it is essential that power costs should be substantially attractive to those in the south

who might be prepared to set up industries in the north. The answer is that the cost of electricity has been variously estimated as representing between 1 per cent. and 4 per cent. of production costs, depending on the industry. Even a 10 per cent. increase in the industrial tariff is unlikely to act as a deterrent to prospective developers thinking of moving to the Highlands.
In any event, as I have pointed out, they would have to meet higher electricity costs elsewhere. They would, one would think, be more influenced by the opportunity of obtaining factory sites and labour in the area than by the possibility of obtaining reduced power costs. It is a fact that the other boards have increased their general tariffs and industrial tariffs since 1959 when the Hydro-Electric Board last put up its tariff.
Coming to the point about the effect on the cost of living and the consumer in the area, of course we are concerned about the position of people on low incomes and in difficult circumstances, but it might put the matter into perspective to point out that the Board estimates that for the small consumer using lighting and nothing else the proposed tariff increase would represent no more than about 3d. a week. For the relatively large consumer of electricity who uses the supply for lighting, for the wireless and for ironing, cleaning, cooking and washing—for the household consuming 3,000 units a year—the proposed increase would represent about 6d. a week.
The hon. Member for Craigton and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock said that this was the first occasion on which the Council had made representations to my right hon. Friend on tariff increases proposed by the Board. My right hon. Friend is most anxious that the Council should realise that his inability to accept those representations is in no way a reflection on the most valuable work which it does in representing the consumer's point of view to the Board and in helping consumers to understand the Board's policies. If in this case these misgivings were felt by the consumers it was absolutely right for the Council to have voiced them.
As the House knows, however, our policy is that the finances of all the


nationalised industries should be on a sound basis. As my right hon. Friend said in a letter which the hon. Member for Craigton quoted, it is not our view that the Hydro-Electric Board can be made an exception. The special problems of the Board, its very heavy burden of uneconomic consumers and its special duty to collaborate in the carrying out of measures for the economic development and social improvement of its district are fully recognised. These recent changes have been made in such a way as to take account of them and to maintain the relative position of the Board vis-à-vis their areas. My right hon. Friend considers that in present circumstances the right thing to do was to ask the Board to maintain the relationship between its tariff and that in the South of Scotland until the Mackenzie Committee has reported and a more permanent basis can be fixed for future targets.
I have a moment left in which to reply to a point which is outside the field of this debate. It was made by the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) who asked about pumped storage. Work is proceeding satisfactorily for the first 200 megawatts set of the Loch Awe scheme and will come into operation in the 1965–66 period. The second 200 megawatt set will come into effect in the next year.
I hope that the information I have given, if it does not satisfy hon. Members opposite, will at least make the position clear to the House and to consumers in the Highland area.

10.28 p.m.

Mr. James H, Hoy: In the two minutes which remain, I assure the Minister that his reply is quite unsatisfactory. He has tried to explain that the Government and the Treasury, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, having made up their minds, the Secretary of State is merely cracking the whip and in response to the consultative committee he has told its members not what he thought but what the Chancellor told him to say.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of a concession, but the only concession offered to consumers in the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board area was that their increase in price would be no more but no less than in any other part of the country. It comes hard from this Government who apparently think that wage increases should not be more than 2½ per cent. to compel the nationalised boards to increase their charges by 10 per cent. How can they expect the public to restrain their demands when the Government are imposing increases in charges of this kind all over the country? The Government, through the Secretary of State for Scotland, has a great responsibility to this part of Scotland. The Hydro-Electric Board has to supply electricity—

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.